Charles Rosher

Charles Rosher was born in London and trained as a photographer before the movies existed as an industry, bringing a portraitist's care for the face into the earliest days of the American cinema. He arrived in California when Hollywood was still a dusty village of open-air stages, and his skill and steadiness quickly made him one of the most sought-after cameramen of the silent screen.

For more than a decade he was the personal cinematographer of Mary Pickford, the most powerful woman in American film, photographing star vehicle after star vehicle and developing an unmatched command of soft, flattering light that could keep the world's most famous face luminous in every scene. He was meticulous and inventive, devising special effects, glass shots, and lighting rigs at a time when the rules were still being written.

His crowning silent achievement came when he joined the German-trained Karl Struss to photograph F. W. Murnau's "Sunrise," a film of extraordinary visual lyricism whose moving-camera passages and dreamlike lighting remain touchstones of the art. For it, Rosher and Struss shared the first Academy Award ever given for cinematography, a historic honor at the very first Oscar ceremony.

Unlike many silent cameramen, Rosher made the transition to sound and then to color without losing his standing. He settled in at MGM, where his elegant, glowing style suited the studio's house of stars, and late in his career he won a second Academy Award for the warm, pastoral Technicolor of "The Yearling." He continued shooting handsome studio pictures, including musicals and the affectionate Americana of "On Moonlight Bay," before retiring in the mid-1950s. Rosher died in 1974, his career a near-complete arc of the medium itself: from hand-cranked cameras and painted flats to the full plush color of the classical studio, always in service of the human face.