“Images shouldn’t be only a pleasing pictorial aesthetic but a projection of the emotions that the characters discover in themselves.”
Ed Lachman is a cinematographer whose work is both cerebral and inspired. Comfortable working with both European and American filmmakers, Lachman was born in Morristown, New Jersey, but made his name working for some of the major figures in the New German Cinema movement of the 1970s, including Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and Volker Schlondorff. In the 1980s, he moved between documentaries and feature films, notably True Stories (David Byrne, 1986), and Less Than Zero (Marek Kanievska, 1987). Soon after, he worked with writer–director Paul Schrader on Light Sleeper (1992), a thematic continuation of the filmmaker’s “Man in a Room” series, which was preceded by Taxi Driver (1976) and American Gigolo (1980). When director Steven Soderbergh sought a stripped-down aesthetic for The Limey (1999) and Erin Brockovich (2000), he turned to Lachman as his DP, who provided a gritty, natural realism. But it’s Lachman’s work with Todd Haynes that has garnered the cinematographer his most accolades, first on the romantic melodrama Far From Heaven (2002), and then on the experimental Bob Dylan narrative I’m Not There (2007), and the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011). In between, he has worked with several of American independent cinema’s most adventurous auteurs, including Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, 1999), Todd Solondz (Life During Wartime, 2009), and Robert Altman (A Prairie Home Companion, 2006). At the same time, he remains connected to world cinema and is one of the cinematographers of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s Import/Export (2007), which was in competition at Cannes, and his latest film, Paradise (2011). Lachman has a video installation and photos in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, and shows photos and films in museums and galleries throughout the world.
