On this International Women's Day, we turn our Modern Masters lens onto one of the most quietly radical voices in American documentary photography — a woman who, armed with a wide-angle lens and a warm curiosity, captured the hidden heart of a nation.

A Woman with a Camera and a Question

There are photographers who shout, and there are those who whisper. Sage Sohier has always whispered — and yet her work echoes across decades. Born in Washington D.C. in 1954, Sohier spent the late 1970s and 1980s wandering the working-class neighbourhoods of America, knocking on strangers' doors, gaining their trust, and producing some of the most affecting environmental portraits ever made. She photographed gay couples at the height of the AIDS crisis. She photographed her fashion-model mother growing old. She photographed children playing in the street before the internet arrived to pull them indoors. Her work is, above all, an act of witness.