Collection of photographs of late 19th-century life in the border region between Outer Mongolia and Buryatia, Siberia, taken by the Russian exile-turned-photographer Nikolai Charushin. With rare, captivating images of rugged landscapes, daily life, and religious customs in “Russia’s Wild East.”

The Bolsheviks executed one of history’s most famous revolutions in 1917, but dissatisfaction with the imperial regime had been brewing for decades before then. The Narodniks (roughly translating to “Populists”) were a group agitating against the Tsar before Marx had even been translated into Russian. Before 1861, nearly half of Russia’s population were serfs that could be bought and sold along with land; after that year’s “Great Emancipation,” members of organized groups like the Circle of Tchaikovsky called for the newly freed masses to rise up in an proletarian revolt.

One Circle of Tchaikovsky member was Nikolai Charushin, who in 1874 was sentenced to nine years of penal labor in Siberia. Afterward, he remained in exile there for more than a decade. During this time he produced commercial photographs and albums, documenting life in a place that was within the same empire yet a world away from the urbane European Russia in which he grew up.

Most of Chaurshin’s Siberian photos are of the sparsely populated, largely agrarian, and ethno-religiously pluralistic region of Buryatia. Abutted on one side by Lake Baikal (the world’s deepest and oldest lake) and on another by Outer Mongolia, for more than a century the area was a frontier trading zone facilitating virtually all official trade between Imperial Russia and Qing China. The region’s diverse character is reflected in the collection’s photos of both Russian Orthodox and Gelug Buddhist holy buildings.

Many of the most visually striking images relate to Buddhist life in the region. Highlights include performers wearing the extremely elaborate and intentionally frightening masks associated with Cham dances done to scare away evil spirits; rolling wooden horse and chariot sculptures created for a festival in honor of Maitreya, the messianic future Buddha in some Buddhist traditions; and a portrait of the 10th Pandido Khambo Lama, the Buryat Buddhist spiritual leader.

Overall this collection is an arresting visual document that represents a fascinating convergence between an oft-overlooked period of Russian revolutionary history and an oft-overlooked cultural tradition within Russia’s borders.