Haskell Wexler

Two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler was named one of the ten most influential cinematographers in movie history, according to an International Cinematographers Guild survey of its membership. He won his Oscars for both black and white and color films — the former for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and the latter for Bound for Glory (1976).

Wexler's other feature films included In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Coming Home (1978) and Mulholland Falls (1996). He also served as a visual consultant on American Graffiti (1973) and shot much of Days of Heaven (1978).

In 1993, Wexler, whose career spanned six decades, was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Cinematographers. In addition to his Oscars for Virginia Woolf and Bound for Glory, he received three other Oscar nominations for his cinematography — for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Matewan (1987) and Blaze (1989). He also received one Emmy Award nomination, for the 2001 HBO movie 61*.

In addition to his cinematography, Wexler directed the seminal late-’60s film Medium Cool, a hybrid of documentary and scripted narrative shot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

In 2005, Wexler's son Mark released a documentary about his father titled Tell Them Who You Are.

Wexler died on December 27, 2015, in Santa Monica, California. He was 93.