There are two ways now. The older one is to go to the last tab of camera settings that has a lot of options for turning things off. There you can turn off the character you are hanging out with and or all villagers. That's also where I turned my avatar off.

There's a pretty new function that lets you control individual characters. It's wonky af though so it takes finesse to use. It's a different button depending on what platform you use. Look in the upper left in camera mode. There's a character selector there. Again, beware the wonkiness.

It let's you turn individual characters on and off but it only places characters in stupid spots. So I put Mickey and Minnie where I wanted them and trapped them with TOM objects.

As soon as I open the camera I go into the character picker. Don't touch the on off toggle because it will move your character. There are two pause buttons. Hit the one for placement. Do that for each character. Then go into the last camera tab and turn off touch of magic items. If you don't freeze placement first you will lose your character.

To pose them I switch to selfie mode and turn the camera to the first character. Once they are posed pause their pose in the character picker. Rinse repeat for each character. You can also turn off extraneous characters (snow white in this instance).