All projects for me begin with a single image—one made early in the process, before I know what the work will become. That first image confirms the intuition, sparks the momentum, and gives the work a direction forward.

I knew there was something for me to photograph in Israel—something deeply personal—but in the beginning, it was only a nagging feeling. On my first trip to start this work, I carried a vague idea of what I was looking for: a leading question, a word or two of inspiration, and a collection of songs in my head. I made some decent-looking images, but they lacked direction and narrative.

Months of research followed. I immersed myself in news from the region, Israeli novels and films, and photo books by those who had come before me. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I came across a story about the first mixed-gender battalion in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). One detail caught my attention: a young woman from India serving in this infantry unit. What is a young woman from India doing serving in the IDF?

Until then, I had never heard the term lone soldier. A lone soldier is a member of the IDF without family support in Israel—either because they have no immediate family in the country or because they are estranged from them. Thousands serve at any given time, coming from more than seventy countries. This was interesting. And it answered the question at the center of this work: how far is someone willing to go to find a sense of belonging—a tribe?

Months later, after countless emails, phone calls, and pulling whatever strings I had, I was granted a single day of access to a military base near the Lebanon border to meet and photograph a group of lone soldiers. It was a profound and moving experience. I spent hours on the base, surrounded by the sunlit hills of Lebanon, listening in dialogue before making a single image—that’s how I work, when permitted.

Leah was the first lone soldier I met. She was guarded at first but willing to engage. At some point, in our second location on the base, I made an image that stopped me when I saw it on the back of the camera. In my excitement, I shared it with Leah, and something shifted. Confidence came over her, a sharpening in her eyes, and a door opened to an intimacy that allowed for the image that would start and anchor the entire project. It’s still one of my favorites.

Another location and another unusable image.

At the time, I was shooting film while also making digital duplicates, testing out the latest mirrorless camera systems. Over years of travel, I had developed a routine for protecting my film—navigating airports, security lines, checkpoints, and the x-ray machines that had become standard in so many hotels. None of it mattered when it came to Israeli airport security. On arriving home, I discovered every roll had been rendered unusable. But I had backup.