Cinematographer Gordon Willis at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2009 Governors Awards, on November 14, 2009. Photo: S. Buckley/shutterstock

Gordon Willis, the cinematographer responsible for stirring camera work in such film classics as the Godfather trilogy and several of Woody Allen’s best-known films, has died aged 82, Hollywood publications reported.

“This is a momentous loss,” American Society of Cinematographers president Richard Crudo told Deadline. “He was one of the giants who absolutely changed the way movies looked.”

Willis received an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2010 and was nominated for best cinematography Academy Awards for Allen’s Zelig and The Godfather: Part III.

But his work was credited with lending unique, often stunning imagery to a roster of films ranging from the romance Manhattan and lavish musical Pennies from Heaven to the Watergate thriller All the President’s Men. In thrillers such as Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View and Klute, for which Jane Fonda won her first Oscar, Willis’s camera work evoked a dream-like, fugue state that critics credited with elevating the films to the status of classics.

The Queens, New York-born Willis worked often with Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, Pakula and especially, Allen, with whom he made eight films. His films with Allen included the black-and-white Manhattan, Annie Hall, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Interiors, Stardust Memories and Broadway Danny Rose.

His credits in the 1990s included Presumed Innocent, Malice and The Devil’s Own, the final film in a nearly three-decade career, which was also Pakula’s last directorial effort.