Recently, I’ve realized that I’ve been something different than human for the last thirty years. I have spent thousands of hours filming with a camera. I have seen the world in ways that the human animal was not born to see it. I could call myself a cyborg. But that doesn’t seem quite right. I am searching to describe what most people have now become – humans who see with the aid of telescopic lenses in the service of imagined films. Ethical dilemmas have been implicit to being a documentary cameraperson since the beginning. An incomplete list of these might be:

• People are in immediate material need, but you give nothing material.
• You can and will leave a situation (a war, a refugee camp, etc.) when they can’t.
• You ask for cooperation, permission without knowing where the filming experience will lead the subject.
• You alter the balance of power by your presence and act on behalf of one side or another in a conflict.
• You enter into relationships that require trust, intimacy and entail total attention. It feels like a friendship or family, but it is not.
• You know little about how the images you make will be used in the future and can not control their distribution or use.
• You change the way your subject is perceived by the people who surround him/her into the unforeseeable future.

The documentary cameraperson has always navigated the ever-in-flux relationships between the director, the subjects, and the as-yet-unmade film. But the 21st century is posing new dilemmas never imagined by those who filmed before the emergence of new technologies. The international distribution platform of the internet, mass surveillance and the rise of machine-operated cameras is radically changing the positions and choices of camerapeople all around the world. The ubiquity of video cameras in phones means that most people on the planet can face as complicated ethical dilemmas as the most experienced documentary cameraperson have ever faced. As a cameraperson who began my career in the 1980s when filming constantly was relatively rare and most people were unfamiliar with being filmed, I have lived on both sides of a divide which generates deep questions about where the future of filming and being filmed will take us. Join me in wondering who we film have become and the ways we might navigate the future.

> Kirsten Johnson