EDWARD LACHMAN WITH EnergaCAMERIMAGE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Thursday February 29th, 2024

Ed Lachman, ASC, is one of those cinematographers who cannot be easily categorized. He is a true master of the moving image, and his creative approach, inspired by painting, photography, and European cinema, has led to collaborations with directors such as Todd Haynes, Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh, Ulrich Seidl, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Jean-Luc Godard, earning him three Oscar® nominations, among other accolades. We are thrilled and immensely proud to announce that this exceptional cinematographer, a recipient of the Golden, two Silver, and one Bronze Frog, has graciously accepted our Lifetime Achievement Award. He will be visiting Toruń in November to accept this honour at EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival!

Edward Lachman was born on March 31^st, 1946 in Morristown, New Jersey. His grandfather (on the mother’s side) owned a number of vaudeville theatres in the 1920s, which were later converted into movie houses, co-managed together with his son-in-law (Ed’s father), a film theatre distributor, who eventually acquired a small cinema in the town of Boonton, New Jersey. Additionally, he represented a French company Lorraine Carbone, which sold arc carbons, the light sources used in film projectors. Therefore, it is safe to say that Ed Lachman literally grew up immersed in the light of cinema.

Edward Lachman
(photo by Grzegorz Piekarski © Camerimage)

However, it was not the family business, but his father’s and mother’s private passions to painting and photography influenced the beginning of Lachman's entry into adulthood. He decided to study art and art history, but didn’t foresee a future in cinema.

During his student years, spent in France at the University of Tours, Harvard and Ohio Universities he was influenced by the Dada artists who challenged accepted definitions of art, as well as his interest in colour theory and its ability to create emotional response in the viewer as implemented strongly in the German Expressionist movement. Simultaneously, with film courses at Harvard taught by film critic Dwight Macdonald and Italian cinema scholar Gideon Bachmann, he began to examine cinematic works with a genuine artistic interest. This led him to focus on the visual aesthetics of film imagery and the deliberate intent behind its presentation. During this period, Lachman also discovered Robert Frank's seminal photographic book, The Americans, which further expanded his perspective on interpreting images as reflections of the artist's experiences and subjective expression. This greatly fueled his interest in cinema and directed young Lachman towards a specific perspective on the cinematographer's role in the filmmaking process. It marked him as an image maker who sought a visual psychological dimension of the image and the emotions it could potentially evoke in the audience.

"Airport Beirut-Kuwait"
(© Ed Lachman's private archive)

During his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at Ohio University, Ed Lachman began creating his first documentary shorts of people he met, gaining practical knowledge in the art of filmmaking. This experience not only led to his initial professional assignments but also a two-year internship at the Maysles Brothers' studio. In the film program while studying Italian neorealism he also explored the modern Italian cinema of the filmmakers of Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and an aspiring young director Bernardo Bertolucci in which he focused his graduate thesis on Bertolucci’s second film Before The Revolution (1964). He met Bertolucci, who was introduced to him at a press screening for the US premier for The Conformist and The Spider Stratagem at the New York Film Festival in 1970. Although the master's thesis was never completed, their lasting friendship endured until Bertolucci's passing in 2018.

He worked out of college at the cinéma vérité documentary film studio of David and Albert Maysles, Ed Lachman took on multiple roles. He ran their office studio, and served as the second camera operator as well as managed sound recording for several of Maysles' films, including Christo's Valley Curtain and Grey Gardens. This experience provided him with a strong foundation in documentary filmmaking and prepared for his future role as a cinematographer in documentaries and later in narrative films. Throughout his whole career, Lachman had the ability to adapt to various directors’ styles, though he has always maintained an affinity to the documentary approach even in the narrative form.

Edward Lachman on the set of documentary "La soufrière"
(© Ed Lachman's private archive)

During the initial stages of his professional career in the early 1970s, Edward Lachman had the privilege of collaborating with a remarkable array of cinematic legends. Alongside the Maysles Brothers and Bernardo Bertolucci, with whom he worked on the set of La Luna (where he met Vittorio Storaro), Lachman crossed paths with Robby Müller (while working on Wim Wenders' The American Friend and Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed), Sven Nykvist (on projects like King of the Gypsies directed by Frank Pierson and Hurricane directed by Jan Troell), and Werner Herzog with whom he shot a number of documentaries including La Soufrière and tragicomedy narrative Stroszek (with cinematography of Thomas Mauch) in 1977. Additionally, he had the opportunity to collaborate with Jean-Luc Godard on The Anatomy of a Shot, a scenario visualization of Passion. The director also invited him to join as one of the three cinematographers (alongside Vittorio Storaro and Renato Berta) for that project, but unfortunately, it did not come to fruition in its originally intended form.

Edward Lachman and Jean-Luc Godard on the set of "The Anatomy of a Shot"
(photo by Ed Lachman © Ed Lachman's private archive)

With his background, Ed Lachman connected to European cinema and American independent filmmaking, both of which offer opportunities for unconventional and often experimental visual storytelling, especially in the context of more personally driven narratives. His extensive filmography includes numerous collaborations with directors such as Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, Carol, Wonderstruck, Dark Waters, Mildred Pierce miniseries, and documentary The Velvet Underground), Ulrich Seidl (Import/Export and The Paradise Trilogy: Faith, Love, Hope), Steven Soderbergh (The Limey and Erin Brockovich), Gregory Nava (Selena, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, My Family) and Paul Schrader (Light Sleeper, Touch). He served as the cinematographer for Sofia Coppola's debut feature, The Virgin Suicides and lensed such films, as True Stories (dir. David Byrne), Less Than Zero (dir. Marek Kanievska), Backtrack (dir. Dennis Hopper), Mississippi Masala (dir. Mira Nair), S1m0ne (dir. Andrew Niccol), Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman’s last film), as well as Desperately Seeking Susan and Making Mr. Right directed by Susan Seidelman, just to name a few. Lachman's inaugural narrative feature was The Lords of Flatbush in 1974, directed by Martin Davidson and Stephen Verona, while his most recent one is El Conde (2023), in collaboration with director Pablo Larraín. Their second film together, titled Maria and starring Angelina Jolie in the lead role, is currently in the post-production stage.

Jaime Vadell and Gloria Münchmeyer on the set of "El Conde"
(photo by Ed Lachman © Ed Lachman's private archive)

In addition to his distinguished career as a cinematographer, Ed Lachman has ventured into directing. His directorial debut in the feature film realm was Ken Park (2002), a collaborative effort with Larry Clark. Furthermore, he has made notable contributions to the documentary genre, lensing films such as Lighting Over Water (dir. Nicholas Ray and Wim Wenders), In Our Hands (dir. Robert Richter and Stanley Warnow), Ornette: Made in America (dir. Shirley Clarke), Mother Teresa (dir. Ann Petrie and Jeanette Petrie), Soldiers of Music (dir. Albert Maysles and Susan Froemke), Collapse (dir. Chris Smith), and Don't Blink – Robert Frank (dir. Laura Israel). Additionally, he has independently directed documentaries, including Report from Hollywood, Cell Stories, Life for a Child and In the Hearts of Africa.

Lachman's exceptional cinematographic contributions have earned him numerous prestigious accolades. He is a three time Oscar^® nominee for Far from Heaven, Carol and the recent El Conde, and received an Emmy nomination for his cinematography in the HBO’s miniseries Mildred Pierce. He holds the distinction of being the sole American cinematographer to have received the Marburg Camera Award in Germany in recognition of his outstanding body of work. He was also honored with the BSC Award for his work on Carol, and received the Pierre Angénieux ExcelLens in Cinematography at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Additionally, in the preceding year, he was bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). In 2019, he also received an analogous accolade from the IMAGO International Federation of Cinematographers.

Ed Lachman’s films competed in EnergaCAMERIMAGE competitions several times. He holds the distinction of being the only cinematographer in the festival's history to have received four main awards: the Bronze Frog for I'm Not There, two Silver Frogs for Far from Heaven and El Conde, and the finally the Golden Frog for his outstanding cinematography in Carol. In 2011, he was also honored with the EnergaCAMERIMAGE Cinematographer-Director Duo Award, which he shared with Todd Haynes.

With all the film images created by Ed Lachman – from capturing the visually contrasting urban and suburban lifestyles in Desperately Seeking Susan, through the manufactured artifice of the Sirkian world’s beauty, that ultimately becomes a form of oppression in Far from Heaven or employing by a masterful play of chiaroscuro to convey the sense of isolation and longing in the characters of Mildred Pierce and Carol, to portraying fractured and contaminated images in Dark Waters as metaphors for the lives of the film's characters – he proves himself to be a versatile cinematographer, who utilizes a broad spectrum of skills, artistic sensibilities, and methods for creating imagery that defies easy classification. Lachman aptly describes himself as a "visual gypsy" who draws from the wealth of experience and numerous journeys he has undertaken around the world in pursuit of his craft.

However, Ed Lachman's creative endeavors extend beyond the realm of cinematic imagery. In addition to his work as a cinematographer, he has maintained an active presence in various forms of visual art. Lachman is a skilled photographer with a portfolio that includes book projects and exhibitions of his photographs and video installations in museums around the world, including New York’s MoMA, The Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain, and a permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Furthermore, Lachman collaborated with the French street-art artist known as JR to design the poster for the 56^th New York Film Festival. The concept behind the poster involved using a series of cut-out eyes from different directors, held by a movie-going audience gathered in a New York alleyway. Prominently featured at the center of the poster are the eyes of Bernardo Bertolucci. In a private correspondence shortly before his passing, Bertolucci reflected on this concept in the following manner:

What a great idea you had of assembling together all the eyes of many of your friends and, who knows, maybe some of your enemies in kind of a forgotten backlot. I was always curious about your vision. Your talent has always created a kind of aura around you. I saw it the first time you came to breathe the atmosphere on one of my sets. Keep working, keep smiling. Ciao, Bernardo Bertolucci.

Edward Lachman is one of the most renowned contemporary cinematographers. His unique approach to visual storytelling is evident in every production he has worked on during his career spanning over five decades, making him a truly exceptional artist. We are honored to welcome Ed Lachman once again to EnergaCAMERIMAGE, where he will receive the prestigious Golden Frog for Lifetime Achievement Award. His visit will also feature a retrospective of his films and a series of audience meetings, which you should not miss!

We invite you to Toruń, Poland for the 32^nd EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival.