Jordan Mintzer - Conversations with Darius Khondji

Conversations with Darius Khondji is one of the only books of its kind to be fully devoted to the life and work of a cinematographer, offering a journey through the past fifty years of cinema with one of the greatest directors of photography who helped revolutionize the art form through his work on both Hollywood films and art-house movies in Europe and Asia.

Darius Khondji has shot films for many of the greatest directors in contemporary cinema, including: David Fincher (Se7en), James Gray (The Lost City of Z), Michael Haneke (Amour), Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), Roman Polanski (The Ninth Gate), Bernardo Bertolucci (Stealing Beauty), Sydney Pollack (The Interpreter), Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children), Bong Joon-ho (Okja) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Too Old to Die Young).

From his early childhood in Iran to his cinephile origins in Paris, from his first Polaroids of New York City in the late ‘70s to his training as a camera assistant, from his feature debut in France to his arrival in Hollywood, from his experiences with world-renown directors and actors to his work with artists and photographers, the book follows Khondji’s evolution as a cameraman alongside the evolution of movies and images from the 1960s to the present.

Conversations with Darius Khondji also covers a wide range of cinematographic and technical topics — lighting, camera operating, film processing, color correcting, lens selection, digital photography and much more — in ways that are accessible and easy to grasp, allowing the reader to discover Khondji’s working methods from film to film. The book is meant to appeal to cinema lovers as much as to film and photography students, or to anyone else interested in the visual arts.

The conversations are accompanied by exclusive interviews with directors, actors and technicians with whom Khondji has collaborated over the years.

Divided into chapters that trace the different phases of Khondji’s filmography, Conversations is illustrated with screen shots from nearly every feature he has photographed, as well as rare behind-the-scenes photos, lighting designs, storyboards, annotated screenplays and previously unpublished Polaroids.

Written by Jordan Mintzer (author of Conversations with James Gray), this richly illustrated book highlights Khondji’s remarkable work while emphasizing the primordial role the cinematographer plays in the making of a film.

Conversations with Darius Khondji is a unique publication in function and form, with a meticulously innovative design that enhances both the text and its accompanying images.

Bilingual English-French edition
Hardcover
21 x 28 cm
304 pages / 400 color photos
Edited by Synecdoche
ISBN 979-10-90172-01-2

© Synecdoche