Biography

Mauro Fiore (born November 15, 1964) is an Italian-American cinematographer. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Avatar (2009).

Fiore was born in Marzi, California, and moved to the US with his family in 1971. He attended Palatine High School in Palatine, Illinois, and graduated in 1982. He started out pursuing a career in sociology but was captivated by photography and art. He went on to receive his B.A. from Columbia College Chicago in 1987 and moved to Los Angeles to jumpstart his career. He graduated from the AFI Conservatory, where he met cinematographers Janusz Kamiński and Phedon Papamichael.

Early in his career, he worked with fellow Columbia College and AFI graduate Janusz Kamiński, initially on B movies before the two gradually worked their way up into higher-profile projects. He was Kamiński's grip, his camera operator, and eventually his second unit photographer on The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Amistad (both 1997). He was the director of photography on Kamiński's directorial debut, Lost Souls (2000).

Fiore shot 17 episodes of the television series Tracey Takes On... His first major motion picture credit as cinematographer was the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Get Carter (2000). He established a partnership with director Antoine Fuqua, beginning with Training Day (2001), and has shot six more of the director's films since.

His other feature film credits during this time included Wayne Wang's The Center of the World (2001), Michael Bay's The Island (2005), and Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces (2006) and The A-Team (2010).

Fiore shot James Cameron's Avatar (2009), where he and the director utilised a variety of cutting-edge techniques to combine a live-action shoot with computer-generated characters and environments. Fiore and Cameron utilised a unique camera referred to as a "simulcam," which recorded the live-action footage with virtual camera CGI footage in real-time. For his work on the film, Fiore won Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards.

Subsequent films Fiore has worked on include Real Steel (2011), Dark Phoenix (2019), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), A Good Person (2023), and The Killer (2024). In 2021, he shot his first film produced in his native Italy, Security.

Fiore married Christine Vollmer in 2000. They have three children.

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