Dyanna Taylor, Director

Dyanna Taylor is a five-time Emmy award winning Cinematographer and Director of Photography whose prominent career in documentaries and features has also earned her a Peabody Award and the honored Muse Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Vision and Achievement in Cinematography from New York Women in Film and Television.

She has traveled the world lensing and directing films, documentaries, and television specials on social issues and environmental/wildlife concerns. Her extensive credits include work for all of the major network and cable media organizations including HBO, PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS and Nat Geo. Recently, she was 2^nd Unit Director of Photography for the Disney feature McFarland, released in spring of 2015, Director of Photography for, just released, Sleepless in America for National Geographic and currently DP for Who Will Write our History, in production and filming in Warsaw and Prague.

A Buddhist, lover of animals and the natural world, Taylor also co-leads the “Wisdom of No Technology Media Makers” retreats, and just completed the 4^th annual media retreat in the mountains of New Mexico.

Her film: Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning, has special meaning for Taylor. She is Lange’s granddaughter, and has been deeply influenced by her grandmother’s sensibility and esthetic. This relationship has given Taylor access to never-before-seen footage, photographs, and journals. Combining Taylor’s memories and personal understanding with thorough scholarship, her film gives the viewer both an understanding and felt sense of the woman whose influential 20^th century work revealed America to America.