Janusz Kamiński — cinematographer with roots in the USSR Bloc
Janusz Kamiński is a Polish-American cinematographer born in Ziębice, Poland (USSR Bloc) who won two Academy Awards for Cinematography and has been the director of photography on virtually every Steven Spielberg film since Schindler's List (1993), making him one of the most influential cinematographers in Hollywood history.
Tracing the roots — Ziębice (Poland)
Born in Ziębice (post-war Poland, formerly part of German Silesia assigned to Poland after WWII) in 1959 and trained in Poland before emigrating to the US, Kamiński comes from the post-war Eastern European world that was shaped by Soviet influence. His visual language — raw, desaturated, historically urgent — was forged in communist Poland and found its fullest expression in Spielberg's Holocaust epic.
Ziębice (Poland). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.