Cameraperson (Cameraperson)

A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into Cameraperson, a tapestry of footage captured over the twenty-five-year career of documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. Through a series of episodic juxtapositions, Johnson explores the relationships between image makers and their subjects, the tension between the objectivity and intervention of the camera, and the complex interaction of unfiltered reality and crafted narrative. A work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, Cameraperson is both a moving glimpse into one filmmaker’s personal journey and a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world.

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"Disarmingly humane and poetic, Cameraperson is one of the most impressive documentaries of the last decade. Created as a collage of documentary footage that professional cinematographer Kirsten Johnson recorded over several decades for other, often engaged films, Cameraperson is not an ordinary author’s showreel, but a layered work that questions the very process of documentary creation through a whirlwind of images and emotions. The f ilm consists of numerous episodes filmed around the world, but the emphasis is not on facts, but rather on reflecting on the power of the image, the framework of documentary “reality”, and the complex relationship between the documentarian and his subject. The episodes resonate with each other by subtly highlighting the main themes, and the director gives the film an important intimate note by drawing on her family story. At the same time personal and universal, Cameraperson is a unique autobiographical project that affirms the power of documentaries to question our ways of looking at the world."

- Stipe Radić