Up until about two months ago, give or take, cultural observers were warning that as a society, we were overly obsessed with our screens. We were spending too much time staring at our phones, tablets, and binge-inspiring TVs and not enough time experiencing things IRL. In our quest to avoid FOMO, they asserted, we were actually missing out on what really matters: the profound beauty of everyday life and the loved ones who enrich it and us.  

They were right, but it took a pandemic to prove it. All across the world, people are seeking to mitigate the unsettling quietude of “safer at home” orders by reconnecting with old friends, family members they’ve lost touch with, and even exes. The irony, of course, is that they’re doing it with their devices. 

Except now it’s different. We’re not absently sending a text while Slacking with a coworker while watching our email. We’re paying attention. As recently as early March, other people were just words on a screen—messages we were obligated to respond to, ideally in a swift manner and with emoji as stand-ins for our emotions. Now we seek out other people’s faces. We want to see each other when we talk. We want to connect. Now even a simple phone call feels vital. In “You Are a Camera,” photographer Dustin Aksland explores these themes.

Begun as a creative response to the pandemic, the project consists of collaborative portraits Dustin shot via FaceTime—collaborative because his subject had the camera (in this case, an iPhone) and Dustin had to relay his aesthetic decisions to them to execute. Never mind that most of them are not photographers, and that sometimes Dustin has to shout to be heard because their phone is placed so far away from wherever he’s chosen to situate them in their environment. 

Notably, these portraits are entirely spontaneous. Other than scheduling a time with his subjects—friends near and far, from LA to New York City, Tokyo, and the French Alps—Dustin plans nothing.

Each portrait is conceived in the moment, organically. It’s worth mentioning that, with two exceptions, he’s never actually visited the homes of the people he’s shooting. When they ring him on FaceTime at the appointed hour, what he sees is what he has to work with. There’s also a limit to how much Dustin can control the exposure and sharpness of the images; his subjects aren’t holding their phone and can’t tap on their face to refocus, inspiring him to find possibilities in whatever happens as it happens.

When his friend Aurélien called from his family home in France, he had been outside enjoying the countryside but—assuming that the portrait would be photographed indoors—told Dustin he’d go back to the house so they could do their shoot. Sensing an opportunity for an expansive landscape portrait, Dustin asked Aurélien to stay outside. “What are the odds of a friend being in silhouette with the French Alps glowing in the background?” he recalls thinking.  

As much as the images in “You Are a Camera” are in part a story of a place, they are in no way documentary portraits. Each element is intentional. To bring about the image he sees in his mind, Dustin might ask someone to move furniture around, for example, or to experiment with an item he notices in their room. For one portrait, he transformed an unremarkable white space into a place of intrigue by having his friend grab a nearby lamp and turn it upside down to illuminate his face, a long exposure adding a haze of soft pinks and blues and blurring the man’s face.

In the world as we knew it, there’d be a monitor set up so subject and photographer could confer about how things were going and make necessary adjustments. During these sessions, though, only Dustin knows what he’s capturing. The subject can barely see him—his face appears as just a small inset in the corner of their phone’s screen—and has no idea how the photos are “turning out.” Technology has got us all hooked on instant gratification, but with the portraits in “You Are a Camera,” patience is a must. And so is trust.

“It’s all about collaboration,” says Dustin. “I can’t do anything without them.” 

Ultimately, “You Are a Camera” is not just a profound portrait series. It’s also a lesson. As the pandemic lingers and the future looks more unpredictable than ever, each portrait suggests there’s value in accepting that we have very little control and that the best way forward is to do our best to celebrate what is, in fact, possible.

Steven, New York City, April 6, 2020 “This is a classic New York story,” says Dustin, who used to live in the city before moving to LA. “I’ve known him for 10 years and never been in his apartment.” With his trademark pompadour and tank-top undershirt, Steven looks like a 1950s side player for Elvis on a tour stop in some roadside motel. In truth, he’s a coder who lives on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and is as known for the perfection of his coiffure as he is for his programming prowess. When Dustin told him he wanted to shoot his portrait, Steven agreed but warned him he’d be in his sweatpants. “I said, ‘Make sure your hair is done.’” “I do my hair every morning,” Steven replied. “Don’t you worry.” At first, they experimented with Steven placing the iPhone in the bathroom, but “it looked like a weird spy camera,” says Dustin, who asked him to try putting the camera somewhere outside the room. Steven stationed his phone on a pantry rack in the adjacent kitchen and went back to his place in front of the mirror. “I saw the other door in the frame, and compositionally, it was just perfect,” Dustin recalls. “This portrait is so him.”