Pankisi Valley is the centre of the Kist community in Georgia and a unique cultural destination. After years of living in the shadow of negative stereotypes perpetuated by the media, I planned to change this perspective towards a positive direction with my photowork inside this small community of a few thousand people. The residents of the valley are descendants of ethnic Chechens and Ingush peoples, also known as the Vainakh, which means ‘our people’. More colloquially known as the Kist people, the earliest tribes migrated to the valley around the 13th century, following the Mongol occupation of the northern Caucasian mountains. During the 18th and 19th centuries, more Vainakh migrated to flee the conflict across the Russian border. This was when the community became known as the Kists. Kists have their own language, cuisine and cultural customs, and follow Sunni Muslim traditions.