Dick Pope, BSC
Dick Pope, BSC became interested in photography as a young boy, when his father gave him a box brownie camera and he began making portraits of his family and neighbors in Kent, England. A few years later, an uncle suggested a career as a cameraman. Pope began as a trainee at the Pathé Film Laboratory in London and then started crewing on movies before moving across to 16mm factual documentaries, first working as an assistant and then cameraman, for many companies including the BBC. He traveled the world, often to remote and inaccessible places including war zones, and also specialized in films about the planet’s threatened and disappearing indigenous tribes. Eventually he moved into drama via these documentaries and many music promos/concerts.
In 1990 he was asked by director Mike Leigh to photograph Life is Sweet, beginning a collaboration that has produced films including Naked, Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake. Pope has twice won the top prize, the Golden Frog, at Camerimage, The International Festival of the Art of Cinematography, for Vera Drake and Secrets & Lies, and in 2006 was honored with the Silver Frog at the same festival for The Illusionist. In the same year he photographed Man of the Year for director Barry Levinson and Honeydripper for director John Sayles. He has just wrapped on his eighth film with Mike Leigh and is about to start shooting Gurinder Chadha’s Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging for Paramount. In 2007 Dick Pope earned both an Oscar and American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Award nomination for The Illusionist.
His other cinema credits include: The Reflecting Skin, The Way of the Gun, Swept from the Sea, 13 Conversations About One Thing and Nicholas Nickleby.
