just something you keep learning your whole lifetime.
Being the cameraperson really does put you in particular quandaries where your idea of what’s respectful is often challenged. It’s not so much the apparatus, the camera, that is perceived to be this intermediary between me and the subject; that quickly falls away. For me, it’s always, “Who’s holding the camera? How do they move?” I feel like I’ve done the same kind of work with a ridiculously huge camera and a teeny, tiny one I can hold in the palm of my hand. But you often find yourself in these moments of total ethical confusion.
Lara and I were shooting in Burundi on a project that was to talk about a lack of infrastructure in the country. We were driving and we saw a group of people carrying a screaming woman on a litter. We could see them and hear them from down the hill. Lara quickly realizes that this