As a cinematographer, Wolfgang Held ASC draws from an early love of travel and music. After high school, he left his hometown of Bonn, Germany and spent two years hitchhiking around the world — picking up his first camera along the way and never looking back.
After settling in New York City in 1993, Wolfgang met direct cinema pioneer Albert Maysles and was hired to light and shoot several projects with him. Albert became his early mentor in cinéma vérité. Self-taught in narrative camerawork, Wolfgang learned his craft by trial and error and by devouring ASC magazines. He has always been drawn to the charged interplay between fiction and documentary.
Narrative
Held just wrapped production as DP on Exit Right, an indie feature starring Susan Sarandon and William H. Macy.
Held spent months on the road as DP for Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles on their outrageous pseudo-documentary Brüno — even role-playing Brüno’s Austrian cameraman for many set-ups.
Held photographed O.G. (HBO), starring Jeffrey Wright. The movie was filmed in an active maximum-security prison, mixing inmates and actors as cast. The unusual filmmaking style, blending fiction and documentary, was written up in The New Yorker.
The Neighbors Window, shot for his longtime collaborator director Marshall Curry, won the Oscar for Best Fiction Short in 2022.
O Horizon, starring Maria Bakalova and David Strathairn, won Best Narrative Feature at the 2025 Santa Barbara Film Festival and has its theatrical run in 2026.
Held’s first narrative feature, Ripe, was singled out by the New York Times for “the same penetrating vision of adolescence found in the photographs of Nan Goldin and Sally Mann.” He also photographed Gomez the debut film of Oscar-winning German director Edward Berger. Other narrative credits include Floating (starring Norman Reedus; Best Cinematography, New England Film Festival), Disappearances (Kris Kristofferson), Maze (Laura Linney), The Tic Code (Gregory Hines), and the cult horror-comedy Teeth for director Mitchell Lichtenstein.
Documentaries
Held won an Emmy for outstanding cinematography for The Carrier (PBS) in 2008, spending months on aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, — including days shooting from an open helicopter door during take-offs and landings. He was nominated again in 2023 for The Warhol Diaries (Netflix). Other series he DP’ed include Peabody Winner and current Emmy Nominee Photographer (National Geographic, 2025), Dynasty: New England Patriots, and Emmy winners Hostages, The Fourth Estate, The Innocence Files and Years of Living Dangerously.
Recent documentary work includes the IMAX feature documentary Sail for Frank Marshall, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found with Raoul Peck and Rebuilding Paradise with Ron Howard. He haS shot multiple series for directors Alex Gibney, Liz Garbus, Marshall Curry, Roger Ross Williams, Jed Rothstein, Brett Morgan and Nanette Burstein.
Documentary feature films include It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, Joan Baez: I am Noise, WeWork: the Making and Breaking of a 47 Billion Unicorn and Leo De Caprio’s Before the Flood.
His early documentary feature credits include Children Underground, an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster directed by Joe Berlinger.
Throughout his career, Wolfgang Held has also filmed and as co-produced feature documentaries with his wife, filmmaker Pola Rapaport starting with Best Cinematography winner Broken Meat to the recent Addicted to Life.
Wolfgang Held is a member of the ASC, AMPAS, IATSE local 600, BAFTA and TV Academy of TV. He studied American Literature in Berlin and Hamburg and holds an M.F.A. Film from Temple University. In 2013 Held co-founded the KameraKollektiv NYC. He lives with his wife and two cats in Brooklyn, New York.
For a full list of credits check IMDB.