In my view, the rawest place left on Earth is South Sudan, which is still recovering from a shocking civil war. The logistics and regulatory red tape involved in traveling 200 miles north of the capital of Juba on water-ravaged roads to photograph a previously unfilmed Dinka cattle camp were formidable, but I knew these hurdles precluded most sane people from entertaining the idea and thus I had a chance of capturing something special and fresh.

I had a preconception of the image I wanted to return home with—something that conveyed the raw enormity of a Dinka cattle camp in an elemental and biblical setting, something timeless and vast. I was the first photographer to visit this 25,000-strong cattle camp, which was close to the heart of the civil war, and I felt a responsibility to get it right. I wanted people to be able to look at the picture for hours and find new stories each time.

In retrospect, I did one clever thing: I brought a ladder because I wanted to silhouette any key detail against the smoke, which the Dinka create to fend off mosquitos, rather than against the setting sun. After all, we have all seen a setting sun and the clichés it can offer, but most have never seen this degree of controlled smoke. The smoke gives a sense of place and an ethereal countenance. Mankind is heavenly on one glance and Dante’s hell on the other.

It was a long way to take a ladder—the Dinka looked at it as if it were a freak of engineering—but what a good decision it turned out to be. I will never reveal this exact destination to anyone. Why would I? This image changed my life.