Claudia Raschke Welcomed as New ASC Member

Claudia Raschke, ASC decided to pursue a career behind the camera after moving to New York from her native Germany to study modern dance with Martha Graham. It was a conversation with a fellow restaurant worker — who also happened to be a part-time cinematography instructor at Columbia University — that planted the seed. Impressed by the framing and composition in Raschke’s still photographs, he invited her to a set and offered her an apprenticeship. "It was like a lightbulb went off in my head," Raschke recalls. "[I understood] cinematography would nourish all of my artistic needs. I can choreograph using camera movements with my subjects; I can paint with lights and sculpt with shadow to create a three-dimensional world … I didn’t want to do anything else after that."

She enrolled in a one-year filmmaking program at New York University and started shooting projects for Columbia film students. She gained a foothold in the industry as a clapper loader and worked her way up the ranks to director of photography, achieving that goal in 1991. After a Gersh agent noticed her work on several films at a Columbia student-film showcase and offered to represent her, Raschke started landing feature work.

Her credits include the documentary features Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution, Inside the Mind of a Dog, Julia, Fauci, and RBG; and the TV documentaries Kevin Costner’s The West; Change, Not Charity; Eleanor & Franklin and Pharma. She was co-cinematographer/additional cinematographer on the docs The Universe in a Grain of Sand, Obsessed with Light and Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down, among other projects. Her narrative credits include Frame of Mind, Walking on the Sky, His & Hers and Kiss Me, Guido!

Find her website here and her Instagram here.

View the current ASC membership roster here.