As a cinematographer, Wolfgang Held ASC draws from his early love for travel and music. After high school, he left his hometown of Bonn, Germany and spent two years hitchhiking around the world. On that trip he picked up his first camera and never looked back.
After settling in New York City in 1993, Wolfgang met with direct cinema pioneer Albert Maysles and was hired to light and shoot several projects with him. Albert became his early mentor for cinema verité filming. Wolfgang is self-taught in narrative camerawork and learned his craft by trial and error and by devouring the ASC magazines. He has always found himself inspired by the interplay of fiction and documentary.
Narrative
Held spent months on the road as DP for Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles for their outrageous pseudo-documentary Brüno. On their wild filmed trip around the world, he also role-played 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 which he DP-ed 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 Fest.
Held photographed the debut film of Oscar-winning German director Edward Berger. Other narrative feature films include Floating, starring Norman Reedus (Best Cinematography, New England Film Festival), Disappearances starring Kris Kristofferson, Maze starring Laura Linney and The Tic Code starring Gregory Hines. The comedy/horror film Teeth, which he filmed for director Mitchell Lichtenstein, has become an underground cult classic.
Documentaries
Held won an Emmy for outstanding cinematography for The Carrier (PBS) in 2008, for which he spent months on aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, filming the life onboard and spent many days in an open door of a helicopter filming the take offs and landing. 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.
Held has recently shot the IMAX feature documentary Sail for Frank Marshall, worked with Raoul Peck on Ernest Cole: Lost and Found. He has filmed with Ron Howard on Rebuilding Paradise and 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 as well 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.