There are only a handful of places left on Earth where cheese is still produced in the most ancient of ways - in a sack made from the skin of an animal – and these cheeses are disappearing. That is, going extinct. The makers and knowledge keepers are aging. The rural life holds little appeal for many in the younger generations. The land is no longer being maintained for agriculture. And thus, the connection between place and product and the very product itself is being lost. One such cheese, called Sir iz Mijeha/Mješine/Mišine, is made across portions of Historic Hercegovina (east central Croatia, through Southern Bosnia and Hercegovina, into the Sinjajevina mountains in Montenegro) but its range has slowly been shrinking. Originally my intent was to create a record that this cheese had existed. An obituary if you will. Because all available data indicated it was on the verge of extinction and would essentially cease to exist within one generation. Initially this even seemed true. But, over many field visits to the supposed “last producers of this cheese” it became clear that while production has declined precipitously and is still in danger, there might just be more producers than previously known. And there may just be some in the younger generations that will keep this alive. These photographs are a selection taken from tens of thousands of images I’ve made over the last decade. They are both a reflection of and invitation to listen and learn about the cheese, about the producers, and about the place itself. Come along as we visit the women and the places where this tradition is alive and well.

I have spent the best part of the last 10 years documenting the producers of traditional foods, specifically the cheesemakers, of rural Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia. One of the byproducts of such an undertaking is having traveled to the furthest reaches of these countries in search of... Along the way I have encountered staggering beauty. Towering mountains, emerald rivers, skies from moody and foreboding to cloudless velvet, sunsets in watercolor hues. I've watched wild horses thunder across the Morane, and old ladies shuffle over the old bridge in Mostar. I've had coffee in katuns powered by nothing but a car battery, up roads that even the goats find challenging to travers. Here are a few of my favorites.

One late fall afternoon I spent a couple of days photographing the grape pickers in the vineyards around Trebinje. The days are long and hard, and the work is all done by hand. Initially most if not all were more than a little skeptical, dismissive even, of my presence. Several even grumbled and sneered to my interpreter that it was easy for me to smile because I didn't have to work like they did. And that I had no idea what it was like for them. As she relayed this to me I had her explain that in fact I actually grew up growing and picking borovnica (blueberries) and spent most of my summers doing a similar sort of hard field work. She explained that it was this very understanding of how hard the work was that I asked the vineyard owner if “I could come and see the people who did the hard work in the field” and not just stay at the winery with the winemakers. As word of this whispered its way up and down the rows, tensions thawed, the rhythm of smoke, pick, sort, pack, smoke, complain, tease, smoke, repeat resumes and I was essentially forgotten. Each worker had their own set of clippers and buckets. Some wore gloves others not. Some brought carts or a wheelbarrow to carry buckets or crates. Wages are paid on the number of crates packed not on hours worked.