Where humanity learned to settle

The Breath of First Fields

"Because I love this land, the history
and the air here."

— Kübra Elmas

The Euphrates Basin in southeastern Türkiye is one of the places where humanity first learned to cultivate crops, raise livestock and establish permanent settlements. For thousands of years, people have continued to cultivate this land, raise animals and build their lives here, creating one of humanity’s longest continuous relationships with the land. The Breath Of First Fields explores that enduring connection through photography, essays and field notes.

The project began in 2019 when Canadian visual journalist and photographer Spencer Wynn first visited the region. The broad agricultural landscape and open horizons reminded him of the Canadian prairies, a landscape with which he has long felt a connection.

The project expanded through collaboration with Kübra Elmas, an agricultural engineer from Şanlıurfa. Her lifelong connection to southeastern Türkiye and her understanding of its agricultural systems brought another perspective to the work. Her essays do not describe the photographs; they deepen our understanding of the landscape, the people and the rhythms that continue to shape it.

Rather than looking back at history, The Breath Of First Fields explores the experience of time through the landscape itself. Every cultivated field, grazing animal, irrigation canal and changing season forms part of a story that has continued for thousands of years. The photographs are not about preserving the past, but about observing a living landscape where that story continues.

The project is built through sustained observation and a commitment to returning. Most photographs are quiet observations made over repeated visits. Occasionally, an extended exposure appears—not as a visual effect, but as another way of gently altering our perception of time within the landscape.

The project continues to grow as new photographs, essays and field notes are added over time.