Here’s new work for the NYT and The Markup on ruined reputations and de facto identity theft due to faulty automated background screenings. Samantha Johnson of St. Helens, Ore., shares a name and birthday with a felon in Minnesota, and the actions of that other Samantha Johnson have hurt Oregon’s Samantha Johnson during background checks regarding housing and employment.
As it was a portrait assignment not on deadline, I used both medium format monochrome film and digital cameras, giving the editors a stylistic choice. They chose the color portraits, but maybe I’m kind of partial to the old-school squares.
