Ed Lachman has been the director of photography on a long list of visually stunning movies. He has worked repeatedly with director Todd Haynes. This year he is nominated for an Oscar for his work on Carol, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel that stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. For Carol, Lachman creates a beautiful pastiche of color and texture to invite the audience into the world of New York in the 1950s as well as the emotional state of two women suddenly and deeply in love. Lachman and I sat down in L.A. to talk about Carol and […]
by Alix Lambert on Feb 11, 2016IMDb buries the cinematographer credit. It’s way below a film’s director, writers, producers, and stars, somewhere underneath the entire cast. And this diminished placement doesn’t just occur on the Internet Movie Database. Besides casting directors, cinematographers might be the most under-sung crew members in the movie business relative to how large a role they play in a film’s success or failure. But at Camerimage, a festival in Poland devoted to the art of cinematography, it’s the DP’s name that’s in the biggest, boldest font, and at a film’s end, it’s the cinematographer credit that gets the loudest applause. Programming a […]
by Whitney Mallett on Dec 9, 2015Carol is getting raves not just for Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett’s subtle performances, but also for Ed Lachman’s cinematography, which was inspired by mid-century street photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier. In a first-person story for Indiewire, the veteran cinematographer, who has worked with Werner Herzog, Sofia Coppola, Todd Solondz, Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh, writes about why he and director Todd Haynes chose to shoot the film in 16mm in order to achieve the look of 1952. “We wanted to reference the photographic representation of a different era,” Lachman said. “They can recreate grain digitally now, but […]
by Paula Bernstein on Dec 7, 2015The folks at Craft Truck sat down with legendary cinematographer Ed Lachman, whose credits include Far from Heaven, Virgin Suicides, Life during Wartime, and Ulrich Seidl’s recent Paradise trilogy. Watch part one above and part two at the link.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2013At Independent Film Week this past September, Ed Lachman taught a Masterclass sponsored by Kodak. An acclaimed cinematographer known for creating lush and arresting images in films such as I’m Not There, Erin Brockovich, and The Virgin Suicides, Lachman was nominated for an Academy Award and received an Independent Spirit Award for his work on Far From Heaven. While the full panel is pay-walled and available only to IFP members, you can watch these three free excerpts right now: Here, Lachman discusses the difference between working with first-time directors and more experienced directors. Here, Lachman theorize about the difficulty of […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Nov 2, 2011