This piece appeared as part of a composite feature originally published in the September 2023 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, focused on four women learning new skills. Read the contributions from Selina Mills, Rejina Pyo and India Amarteifio here.

Seeing the world through a lens makes me more attentive to what happens around me. Both my father and my grandfather were avid photographers – I remember looking at their portraits of my relatives in our family albums when I was little, and I now recognise their talent through those pictures: the way they are cropped and composed, and the way the light falls. They are real treasures.

When I graduated from high school in Denmark, I hitchhiked around the world carrying a camera with me, which is where my passion really started. But, on my return from the trip, I got an offer to try out some modelling work in Paris – and things took off. From the get-go, I was very fortunate that I got to work with so many legendary old-school photographers: Herb Ritts, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Karl Lagerfeld, Patrick Demarchelier and Helmut Newton… It was amazing being part of their artistic creations, helping to express the stories they had in their minds.

I tried to absorb as much knowledge from them as I could, and that became my photography education. When I was in my twenties, Herb Ritts gave me a Polaroid camera and I took it everywhere with me. I learnt the craftsmanship and the technical background that’s not required with digital cameras.

Organically, I shot a few editorials and, little by little, I started getting advertising jobs as a photographer. But I’ve always longed to shoot reportage because I admire the work of Robert Frank and Robert Capa. Since I became a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) in 2019, I have been visiting refugee camps across the world, including those in Jordan, Ukraine and Rwanda, where I use my camera to help tell people’s stories. I speak six languages, so I am usually able to communicate directly with the women and families directly, rather than through an interpreter. This helps my subjects feel more comfortable.

There’s a connection between everything I do in front of and behind the camera. I learnt so much about how to approach the subjects I work with in a psychological way, because of how I’ve been spoken to when modelling. The way photographers enabled me to show strength as well as vulnerability – that helped me become a better photographer.

Earlier this year, I visited Colombia on a trip to document the lives of women who had been internally displaced by the armed conflict there. In Bogotá, I met and photographed a trans woman called María Victoria, whose identity has made her a target of armed groups. She risks her life to fight for the rights of her community and to raise awareness of their situation. It was very powerful to hear how she has helped others being treated in horrific ways because of who they are. Her strength is inspiring, and she was beautiful to photograph.

Christensen with the artist María Victoria

I also met women from the indigenous Makaguan tribe, who have been forced to flee their reservation because of the conflict. But, they still did everything to make me feel welcome in their village, including cooking all day. I learnt that one woman lost two of her sons last year, and another had lost her baby. To share these women’s stories, to capture their resilience in a photograph, is a privilege.

It is a big dream of mine to work for a newspaper or for Magnum Photos – I always keep that goal in my mind. Photojournalism is so enriching; I love capturing a split-second of life.

This piece was originally published in the September 2023 issue of Harper’s Bazaar – out now.

Navy veteran Walter Smith’s art teacher is just a hop, skip and a jump away from the front door of his childhood home.

His fondest times there have always included creativity in one form or another. As a child, he dreamed of the day he could have a camera in hand, using photography to explore the vast wildlife of nature. Now as an adult, you can spot him across Delray Beach nature trails and parks capturing the essence of mother nature.

With the help of VA’s Veteran Readiness and Employment program, the aspiring photographer was able to make his childhood dream his new reality with the deluxe gift of a Sony camera, laptop and Photoshop software.

For more than 15 years, creativity has been at the tip of his finger with every photo capturing what lies behind the breezy trees and trails of South Florida. The camera was Smith’s key out of the door. He still remembers the days he would approach his front door and twist the lock open to immediately twist it back to seal it shut.

“As a PTSD veteran, every day is a challenge. Photography helps my PTSD by allowing me to get out of my home and express myself without encountering too many people. When I take a picture, I practice mindfulness. I focus on the moment and focus that energy to capture my surroundings. It is that very moment that is my therapy for my PTSD,” Smith said.

Leaving his home to venture out into the unknown was something he would have never fathomed, but is now his daily routine with not just the equipment of his dreams but also the support behind him.

“The Creative Arts team at West Palm Beach VA has become my little mini-family. They have changed my life and have opened so many doors for me. What really matters to me is that I know somebody believes in me and supports me,” he said.

This support has evolved into the display of his captured moments. His artwork speaks for itself. “It allows me to introduce myself without having to speak. I just share a picture. It is my way of expressing myself. My creativity has always been my inner voice. The feedback I get from pictures is so satisfying and just so great to hear.”

With every adjustment to the lens to see the picture clearer, Smith replaces difficult battle images in his mind with new peaceful images of his South Florida explorations.

Alex Spear

A new exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA), “People Watching: Contemporary Photography Since 1965,” explores the human habit of observing other people through a collection of over 120 photographs from nearly 50 photographers.

The exhibition begins with two photographs, taken in 1991 and 1992 by Native American photographer Zig Jackson for a series entitled “Indian Photographing Tourist Photographing Indian.”

Frank Goodyear, co-director of the BCMA, said the curators placed the photos at the beginning of the exhibit to frame the moral questions surrounding people-watching and photographing people.

“We placed these photos right here at the outset because we want to call attention to the idea that photographing people is not an innocent act, that it’s fraught with power relations,” Goodyear said. He added that photography has historically been used to marginalize and exoticize various peoples, and that Jackson’s work reveals the damage tourists’ cameras have done to Indigenous communities.

Another section of the exhibit, entitled “On the Street,” shows street photographs of people in New York City in the 1960s. The public setting of the photos suggests that many of the subjects are unaware that they’re being photographed, Goodyear explained.

“What is the implication of photographing a stranger on the street?” Goodyear said. “There is, I think, a challenge to making photographs in public spaces that allow us all to have kind of a voice or agency in this moment of exchange.”

The exhibition also shows photos taken by Professor of Art Michael Kolster. He took photos of his wife, Christine, and his son, Calvin, at the height of the pandemic and as Calvin was growing and getting taller.

“The work that’s included in the museum comes from a moment where I thought it was actually really important to photograph [Calvin] in more depth, or at least more concertedly,” Kolster said.

He went on to explain the significance of Calvin’s physical growth.

“It’s important for people to understand that Calvin is severely disabled … and so he has always been kind of smaller to begin with,” Kolster said. “And so for me to say that he’s taller means that he’s five feet instead of four and a half feet. So for a 16-year-old, he still seems smaller than your average 16-year-old, and he can’t talk, or at least he doesn’t really have what we can understand to be expressive communication.”

Kolster said that Calvin’s disabilities make it difficult for him to photograph his son.

“I often want to photograph him in a certain way, but he doesn’t understand what it means to hold still or to collaborate in the making of the pictures,” Kolster said. “And so that’s one thing that I think is very interesting to me as a sort of larger question around photographing: Is it a portrait if the person being photographed doesn’t have awareness of the collaboration or of them being photographed?”

The exhibition draws entirely from artworks that belong to the museum’s permanent collection, with exception of the photos taken by Kolster.

“I think it’s important to underscore that it’s a show that comes almost exclusively from the museum’s collection,” Kolster said. “This represents a fraction, actually, of the photographic collection, but it shows that the collection of the college’s museum is first rate.”