I was lucky enough to know Vilmos Zsigmond for many years. I didn’t know him well but I knew his work and I spent enough time with him at meetings and events to have a high opinion of him both as a cinematographer and as a person.
As a cinematographer there was no question, he was a master. He came from a time when everything had to be perfect in front of the lens before the camera could roll. There was no 15 stops of latitude, no Photoshop to tame things after the fact. If you couldn’t see things the way film saw things you couldn’t do the job. Vilmos knew the way film saw so well that he could play around the edges, use it as an expressive tool, not just a recording medium. He could see like a camera. He proved that over and over on movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter and The Rose. But being a cinematographer means you get a hundred helpers to make the image. There are camera operators, lighting technicians, grips, an endless variety of professionals all standing ready to help you perfect the picture. It also means you make pictures that serve someone else’s vision, even while you incorporate your own. Still photographers on the other hand usually work alone. They have their eye and their craft and their instinct, nothing else. It’s a very different way to work and it reveals a great deal about the person behind the lens. Making pictures for yourself means choosing everything. Vilmos made stills all his life while working on movies. His choices say a lot about him both as a photographer and as a person.
I have a wonderful memory of a dinner with Vilmos many years ago. The dinner was to welcome our friend David Samuelson back to the states, It was Vilmos, David and his wife, me, my wife and a few others at some fancy restaurant in Santa Monica. We finished a long and lovely meal drinking Grappa and left the place feeling very little pain. We got in our cars and Darcy and I headed for home. It turned out Vilmos was headed the same way. We pulled up to a stoplight together and just goofing I revved the engine and hit the horn – a challenge to a race. When the light turned green Vilmos hit the gas and I did too and we dragged raced our way down Wilshire Boulevard with Darcy yelling at me to quit. We did and then we waved goodbye and then I drove home. With Vilmos it was about the light but it wasn’t all about the light:)
All photos copyright the estate of Vilmos Zsigmond
Andy Romanoff website http://andyromanoff.zenfolio.com/
