Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work on one particular motion picture.
History
In its first film season, 1927–28, this award was not tied to a specific film; all of the work by the nominated cinematographers during the qualifying period was listed after their names. The problem with this system became obvious the first year, since Karl Struss and Charles Rosher were nominated for their work together on ' but three other films shot individually by either Rosher or Struss were also listed as part of the nomination. In the second year, 1929, there were no nominations at all, although the Academy has a list of unofficial titles that were under consideration by the Board of Judges. In the third year, 1930, films, not cinematographers, were nominated, and the final award did not show the cinematographer's name.Finally, for the 1931 awards, the modern system in which individuals are nominated for a single film each was adopted in all profession-related categories. From 1939 to 1967 with the exception of 1957, there were also separate awards for color and for black-and-white cinematography. Since then, the only black-and-white films to win are Schindler's List and Roma.
Floyd Crosby won the award for ' in 1931, which was the last silent film to win in this category. Hal Mohr won the only write-in Academy Award ever, in 1935 for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Mohr was also the first person to win for both black-and-white and color cinematography.
No winners are lost, although some of the earliest nominees are lost, including The Devil Dancer, The Magic Flame, and Four Devils. The Right to Love is incomplete, and Sadie Thompson is incomplete and partially reconstructed with stills.
David Lean holds the record for the director with the most films that won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the Oscars with five wins out of six nominations for Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and Ryan's Daughter.
The first nominees shot primarily on digital video were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire in 2009, with Slumdog Millionaire the first winner. The following year, Avatar was the first nominee and winner to be shot entirely on digital video.
In 2018, Rachel Morrison became the first woman to receive a nomination. Prior to that it had been the last gender-neutral Academy Award category to never nominate a woman.
In 2019, Alfonso Cuarón became the first winner of this category to have also served as director on the film, for his film Roma. This followed a public dispute between Cuarón and the Academy over the Academy's plan to shorten the Oscars broadcast by relegating four awards, including that for cinematography, to the commercial breaks in the show. Cuarón objected by saying, "In the history of cinema, masterpieces have existed without sound, without color, without a story, without actors and without music. No one single film has ever existed without cinematography..."
Superlatives
Winners and nominees
Winners are listed first in colored row, followed by the other nominees.1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1970 | - | - |
| 1970 | Ryan's Daughter | Freddie Young |
| 1970 | Airport | Ernest Laszlo |
| 1970 | Patton | Fred J. Koenekamp |
| 1970 | Tora! Tora! Tora! | Osami Furuya, Sinsaku Himeda, Masamichi Satoh and Charles F. Wheeler |
| 1970 | Women in Love | Billy Williams |
| 1971 | - | - |
| 1971 | Fiddler on the Roof | Oswald Morris |
| 1971 | The French Connection | Owen Roizman |
| 1971 | The Last Picture Show | Robert Surtees |
| 1971 | Nicholas and Alexandra | Freddie Young |
| 1971 | Summer of '42 | Robert Surtees |
| 1972 | - | - |
| 1972 | Cabaret | Geoffrey Unsworth |
| 1972 | 1776 | Harry Stradling Jr. |
| 1972 | Butterflies Are Free | Charles Lang |
| 1972 | The Poseidon Adventure | Harold E. Stine |
| 1972 | Travels with My Aunt | Douglas Slocombe |
| 1973 | - | - |
| 1973 | Cries and Whispers | Sven Nykvist |
| 1973 | The Exorcist | Owen Roizman |
| 1973 | Jonathan Livingston Seagull | Jack Couffer |
| 1973 | The Sting | Robert Surtees |
| 1973 | The Way We Were | Harry Stradling Jr. |
| 1974 | - | - |
| 1974 | The Towering Inferno | Fred J. Koenekamp and Joseph Biroc |
| 1974 | Chinatown | John A. Alonzo |
| 1974 | Earthquake | Philip H. Lathrop |
| 1974 | Lenny | Bruce Surtees |
| 1974 | Murder on the Orient Express | Geoffrey Unsworth |
| 1975 | - | - |
| 1975 | Barry Lyndon | John Alcott |
| 1975 | The Day of the Locust | Conrad Hall |
| 1975 | Funny Lady | James Wong Howe |
| 1975 | The Hindenburg | Robert Surtees |
| 1975 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Haskell Wexler and Bill Butler |
| 1976 | - | - |
| 1976 | Bound for Glory | Haskell Wexler |
| 1976 | King Kong | Richard H. Kline |
| 1976 | Logan's Run | Ernest Laszlo |
| 1976 | Network | Owen Roizman |
| 1976 | A Star Is Born | Robert Surtees |
| 1977 | - | - |
| 1977 | Close Encounters of the Third Kind | Vilmos Zsigmond |
| 1977 | Islands in the Stream | Fred J. Koenekamp |
| 1977 | Julia | Douglas Slocombe |
| 1977 | Looking for Mr. Goodbar | William A. Fraker |
| 1977 | The Turning Point | Robert Surtees |
| 1978 | - | - |
| 1978 | Days of Heaven | Néstor Almendros |
| 1978 | The Deer Hunter | Vilmos Zsigmond |
| 1978 | Heaven Can Wait | William A. Fraker |
| 1978 | Same Time, Next Year | Robert Surtees |
| 1978 | The Wiz | Oswald Morris |
| 1979 | - | - |
| 1979 | Apocalypse Now | Vittorio Storaro |
| 1979 | 1941 | William A. Fraker |
| 1979 | All That Jazz | Giuseppe Rotunno |
| 1979 | The Black Hole | Frank V. Phillips |
| 1979 | Kramer vs. Kramer | Néstor Almendros |