As an editor, expedition organiser and independent researcher, Sardar brings together photography, field observation and cultural inquiry. His work is guided by curiosity about how communities understand their surroundings and how knowledge, customs and identity are carried from one generation to the next.
Early Life and Influences
Sardar was raised in Makhachkala, Dagestan, in a family with deep connections to the earth sciences. His father was a geophysicist and his grandfather a seismologist. Through them, he encountered the worlds of scientific observation, field research and expedition life at an early age.
These experiences encouraged him to look closely at the relationship between geography and human life. They also shaped the patient, observational approach that would later become central to Anthropogeos: spending time in a place, listening to its communities and allowing different perspectives to inform the final record.
His professional career gave him extensive experience in leadership, organisation and the development of long-term projects. Over time, he applied these skills to independent research, publishing and expedition work, creating a structure through which specialists from different fields could collaborate.
Building Anthropogeos
Through Anthropogeos, Sardar has organised and led 44 interdisciplinary expeditions across Greenland, Antarctica, the Gobi Desert, Svalbard, Guatemala, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus, the Alps and the Russian North.
Each journey begins with a place but develops through the people connected to it. Researchers, photographers, writers and editors work together to document local knowledge, architecture, customs and cultural memory. The resulting projects combine detailed observation with visual storytelling, creating layered portraits of regions and communities.
Sardar’s interests also extend to winemaking traditions in South America, South Africa and New Zealand. This work examines wine as a product of landscape and climate, as well as an expression of history, craftsmanship and community.
His work in Uzbekistan has included first-hand research, photography and interviews at Tashkent’s Chorsu Bazaar, alongside visits to Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. This research considers the bazaar as both a physical landmark and a living social space in which food, trade, architecture and tradition meet.
Sardar is also the founder and co-editor of Land of Diversity, a socio-anthropological project dedicated to documenting cultural and geographic variety through field research and visual narratives.
An Ongoing Cultural Archive
Sardar continues to develop Anthropogeos as a living cultural archive. His editorial approach gives space to many forms of knowledge, from specialist research to personal testimony and everyday practice.
At the centre of his work is a simple idea: a place cannot be fully understood through maps or landscapes alone. Its meaning emerges through the people who live there, the stories they preserve and the relationship they build with the world around them.
His work moves between sustained field research, teaching and public scholarship. He is the author of academic articles, monographs and works written for a wider readership, and has curated exhibitions that bring ethnographic research into dialogue with material culture and lived experience. Within Anthropogeos, he provides academic guidance and helps place field observations within their broader historical and ethnographic contexts.
She now works independently as a writer, researcher, photographer and painter. Her interests centre on the textures of human life: the rituals, objects, gestures and visual traces through which people express their relationship to place. At Anthropogeos, she contributes editorial insight and visual research, helping to shape field material into thoughtful and coherent stories.
Her experience includes project development and field production, from organising expeditions to coordinating international teams and local partners. Working across varied cultural and geographical contexts, she creates the structures that allow research and visual storytelling to come together with clarity, sensitivity and purpose.
CONTACTS
- info@anthropogeos.com
- pr@anthropogeos.com
- partner@anthropogeos.com
