Born: ?, Brooklyn, New York City, N.Y., USA.

Education: Hebrew University, Jerusalem [Jewish history].

Career: Learned about cameras and lenses during a stint in the camera room of Ferco, a camera rental facility in New York, and then learned lighting, film stocks, and set procedure as a much sought-after c.asst. He likes to keep a low profile, working on commercials and other projects that keep him, in his own words, 'outside the club'.

Ph commercials dir by Brian Buckley, Hank Pearlman, David Gray [for Tribeca Film Festival], Kenny Herzog/Clay Weiner [for Bud Light], Javier Blanco, Scott Vincent, Haskell Wexler, a.o. Ph music videos dir by Billy Bob Thornton.

Member of the ASC since 2005.

Awards: Las Vegas Film Critics Society 'Sierra Award' nom [2000] for 'All the Pretty Horses'.

Website: Barry Markowitz

About 'All the Pretty Horses': One of Markowitz's first choices was to shoot anamorphic. "That's the way we had to go, because it's big and wide," he says. "We toyed around with Super 35, but I got comments from editors and other DPs saying to go anamorphic, because the opticals will hold up better. So I shot with a great amount of light, which is something I never do. But I had to do it for focus, because I didn't want reshoots. I shot with a high depth-of-field - 16 I'd be shooting indoors, at night I'd be shooting at 11. Sometimes it was really disgusting looking. It was so overlit. Matt Damon would come on the set in sunglasses. But I just kept the ratios the same. Whether you're way down at the end of the scale, or way up on top, if you have the same ratio, even though it looks ugly to the eye, it all comes out in the end. […] Although to the eye the interior sets often looked like a house ablaze, again Thornton kept pushing for low light, and an uncluttered image. Apart from the double 85 for midday exteriors, filters and diffusion were verboten on the 'All the Pretty Horses' set: "Not even on the talent, not even on Penelope [Cruz]," says the cinematographer. "She doesn't need it anyway. For Billy, the rawer the better, the less makeup the better - no makeup is good, too." [From article by John Calhoun in 'Lighting Dimensions', 2001.]