In this project I minted my thought process and the formation of my entire way of seeing.

This is a searchable blockchain archive contains all of my first film. Well… not the actual first rolls, but certainly among the earliest I shot with a professional camera. Specifically, they're the entirety of my first body of work, every frame from start to finish, of my journey into Svanetia, a secluded mountain region in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia. This journey was the first time I fell in love with a people and a place this deeply, and it forever changed how I made pictures. In this film, I began as a backpacker with a handful of slide film and no vision for storytelling, but over the course of 107 rolls, taken in three journeys over three years, I learned to see. The result was my first photo story, and one that would lead to my career as a National Geographic photographer. These film strips are every blurry frame and boring thought and hesitation of that journey, but also every risk and breakthrough and reward that made me the photographer I am today. Sixteen years after that first journey, National Geographic magazine sent me back on assignment to find my family again.

Search the archive at firstfilm.xyz