Cinematographer

True Stories With a Lifelong Cinematographer
By Steve Dollar
May 5, 2008, 07:58

Most visual artists leave a signature on their endeavors, a revealing "tell" that acts as an immediate way to describe their style. When you think of camerawork in the movies, for instance, there's no mistaking Vittorio Storaro's epic eye behind Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, or Gregg Toland's definitive deep focus in Citizen Kane.

So go ahead, try to put a finger on Ed Lachman. For the past three decades, the cinematographer has directed photography for Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Paul Schrader, Mira Nair, Sofia Coppola, and other blue-chip directors — his first commercial credit was The Lords of Flatbush in 1974 — without ever settling into an aesthetic niche.

"No two films look the same," said director Todd Haynes, who collaborated with Mr. Lachman on the neo-Sirkian Far From Heaven (2002) and last year's kaleidoscopic I'm Not There, said. "And that is very unusual for a DP." Indeed, Mr. Lachman is a bit like Bob Dylan, the chameleonic subject of the latter film, in that he reinvents himself with each new outing.

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