Bradford Young Net Worth

He is the first person of color to be nominated in the Academy Award cinematography category since 1998 when Remi Adefarasin was nominated for Elizabeth. In addition to film work, Young has done cinematography for music videos for artists such as MGMT, Nora Jones, and Beck.

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).

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.

On September 22, 2016, Young was announced as the Cinematographer for the untitled Star Wars Anthology film on Han Solo. 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.'"