Exposing Herself

Celebrated cinematographer Kirsten Johnson has filmed people in some of the world’s most unforgiving places and difficult situations. Now she turns the camera on her own process to ask: What have I done?

- Christine Spines

IMAGES HAVE BECOME THE ultimate proof of life in the Smartphone Age. We leave our mark through our photographs, as if to say: I’m still here. I matter. I’m loved. I waited in line to eat David Chang’s spicy chicken sandwich. We collect visual moments like stamps in a passport, tracking our migrations and milestones, providing the faintest sketch of our histories in a series of vivid, color enhanced, geo tagged pictures. We’re doing the same on virtual walls every day: I ’gram, therefore I am.

Nearly 150 years ago, civil rights pioneer Frederick Douglass predicted that the popularization of photography would hold us accountable to the principles of democracy by reflecting the ineluctable truth back at us in the starkest—then, literally black-and-white—terms. And the tragic events of summer 2016, documented in real time on Facebook Live or posted on YouTube, have supported and exceeded his prophecy in ways he never could have imagined.