— -- "Mudbound" director of photography Rachel Morrison made Oscars history Tuesday morning, becoming the first woman ever to be nominated for a best cinematography award.
“Honestly I am still in shock a little bit, but I am incredibly excited and incredibly honored,” Morrison told ABC News after the nominations were announced. “This is literally a dream come true.”
“I am certainly grateful both for the opportunity to be the first on the platform and really hopefully, it inspires young women to follow their dreams and to get in the camera department and become cinematographers,” she added.
This is the second historic nomination that Morrison has garnered for her work on "Mudbound."
Earlier this month, she became the first female nominee for an American Society of Cinematographers Award for outstanding achievement in a theatrical release.
“I really think we have a responsibility as filmmakers to infuse things with a message,” she said. “‘Mubdound’ was kind of a dream for me because it was the chance to do something that was visceral and visual, but also had something important to say.
Morrison, 39, studied photography and film at New York University, and afterward, moved into documentary filmmaking and, briefly, reality TV, she told ARRI. However, she quickly discovered that her passion was in narrative film, and she has steadily worked in that field for nearly a decade.
Most recently, Morrison finished production on Marvel's "Black Panther," which was her second project with director Ryan Coogler. Previously, the two collaborated on the 2013 film "Fruitvale Station."
Now, after the #MeToo movement and Time's Up, Morrison said she is starting to see change in the industry.
“My hope is that the nomination is for the work and not tokenism. I’m honored to be a part of this year but my hope is that it’s … for the work itself,” she told ABC News. “It feels like times are changing finally. We are busting through the ceilings and hopefully never looking back.”
“Statistically, there is such a small percentage of us still. We just need to get our numbers up us and then you’ll see a lot more of us every year come nomination time.”
