Bradford Young

Young was the cinematographer of the Netflix drama miniseries When They See Us, based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case, which earned critical acclaim.

Young's feature films as director of photography include White Lies, Black Sheep (2007), Pariah (2011), Restless City (2011), Middle of Nowhere (2012), Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013), and Mother of George (2013). He has won Cinematography Awards at the Sundance Film Festival twice. In 2011, he won for his work on Pariah. Two years later, he won for his work on both Mother of George and Ain't Them Bodies Saints. Young is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).

In 2012, Young worked with visual artist Leslie Hewitt on an dual-channel video installation work. On May 12, 2013, Young and director Andrew Dosunmu presented Mother of George as the Closing Night selection for Maryland Film Festival. He was the cinematographer for Selma, which won the BET Award for Best Movie in 2015.

Young prefers shooting with available light. For example, in Pariah, for a nighttime bedroom scene, he shot using only Christmas lights and an IKEA lamp with a red lampshade. Amanda Petrusich in her 2012 article on Young for The New York Times states that he "favors raw light and has a penchant for shooting into it, but said he ultimately focuses on getting out of the way."

In a 2013 article from The Washington Post about cinematographers who were trained at Howard University, Hans Charles, a frequent camera assistant for Young said that he has developed a versatile but also consistently poetic, oblique visual style.

In January 2017, Young became the first African-American cinematographer to be nominated for an Academy Award, for his work on Arrival. His work on Arrival also earned him a Silver Frog award from Camerimage and nominations for awards from BAFTA and the American Society of Cinematographers.

In a 2017 article from the Courier Journal, Young is quoted as acknowledging older black cinematographers such as Ernest Dickerson (Malcolm X), Arthur Jafa (Daughters of the Dust) and Malik Sayeed (Clockers) as artists who lay a foundation for black cinematographers like himself. He told the Courier Journal that he was "trying to find that balance between making sure I am present but also being that voice in the wilderness that says 'there has been great work by African-American cinematographers and it's a shame those people who came before me and who have been my teachers were not nominated for awards.'"