I shot this using a mix of digital, VHS, and iPhone, trying to capture the layers of this place the way I feel them.
This is Gombe National Park, a place that means everything to me. It’s where my grandmother
@janegoodallinst , began her work studying wild chimpanzees in 1960. She was 26, arriving by boat with just a notepad, binoculars, and a dream.
There were no trails then. No assistants. Just dense forest and chimps that took months to trust her. The world didn’t believe a young woman without a degree could live in the wild and change how we understand our closest relatives, but she did.
Today, the Jane Goodall Institute holds the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous study of animals in the wild. But beyond the record books, it’s a living story, one that shaped my family, shaped me, and still unfolds every time I return to this place.
It’s where my grandparents met. Nat Geo sent my grandfather, to film her here. They fell in love, built a life, raised my dad in this forest. There’s even a book, Grub: The Bush Baby loool, about his wild childhood in Gombe.
We still stay in the same house my grandmother lived in when she first arrived. Same walls. Same creaky doors. Same view of the lake. Waking up there, hearing the forest come alive, makes time feel like it folds in on itself.
Every visit feels like walking through memories I didn’t live but somehow carry. Gombe teaches you to slow down, to listen. Every frame I shoot here is a quiet thank you, to this place, to my family, to the stories I come from.
