​Oscar winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler dies at 93

LOS ANGELES - Haskell Wexler, the two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer and prominent social activist, has died at age 93.

Wexler's son, Oscar-nominated sound director Jeff Wexler, told The Associated Press his father died Sunday.

Wexler's innovative approach to film helped him win Academy Awards for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and the Woody Guthrie biopic "Bound for Glory."

Wexler also photographed some of the most politicized and influential films of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Jane Fonda-Jon Voight anti-war classic "Coming Home," and the racial drama "In the Heat of the Night," as well as the Oscar-winning adaptation of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

He shot several films for John Sayles (including "Matewan," "The Secret of Roan Inish" and "Silver City") and Dennis Hopper ("Colors"), contributed to Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," and shot concert scenes for the Bette Midler film, "The Rose."

He was the rare cinematographer known enough to the general public to receive a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

He also directed documentary films, the style of which he also employed in his 1969 fiction film, "Medium Cool," about a TV news cameraman.