The hardest part of photographing on top of a 13th century defensive tower in the mountains of the Georgian Republic, is getting everything in the frame without falling off.

So, last summer, while I was photographing a group of teenagers hanging out on this ancient structure, I was paying more attention to where my feet were than the faces in my viewfinder. But three minutes into the shoot one of them looked straight at me and said: “I know you.”

This place, Svanetia, was the first place I made a photo story. I’d fallen in love with the people and the landscape and the songs of this remote region of the Georgian Republic on a journey I took there with my first