Vientiene. 4:07 AM. Alarm blasts: After 36 hours of travel it felt more amplified, and I just wanted it to stop. I reached for what I thought was my phone to kill the alarm. It wasn’t. My hand found the instant camera instead, and before I was even awake enough to know what I’d done, the flash had already gone off.
The flash ensured I was up for the day.
The print slid out — light streaking blue and violet across the frame, a smear of magenta where something must have moved as the shutter fired. No room. No face. Just color and motion.
The first picture wasn’t a masterpiece. It was a mistake. A snooze button mishap.
I almost left it behind. But sometimes the mistakes in life are what guide you. So I grabbed it, not sure how I’d ever use it. But sure, somehow, that I needed to keep it.
Ten villages and three hundred photographs were about to begin. And the first frame wasn’t a person at all.
This is where it started.
