Biography

Member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). Served as President from 1993 to 1996 and 1999 to 2001.

Kemper served as president of the American Society of Cinematographers from 1993-96 and 1999-2001 and received the guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998.

Kemper worked with the leading directors of the 1970s including John Cassavetes, Sidney Lumet, Anthony Harvey, Michael Ritchie, Ulu Grosbard, Peter Yates, Karel Reisz, Elaine May, J. Lee Thompson, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Robert Wise, Carl Reiner, Bob Rafelson, Irvin Kershner, Richard Attenborough, and Norman Jewison.

On his very first day on Husbands - he came on after the original DP, Aldo Tonti, decided to leave after a week - Kemper was challenged to light a scene in a men's bathroom in which the walls were painted black and all the actors in it were wearing black overcoats for a funeral. "Cassavetes came out on the set and wished me good luck on my first time out." I said, 'John, will you please tell me how do you expect me to light this set?' ... He said very simply, 'You're the cinematographer, I'm the director, you figure it out,' and he walked away. That's how I got thrown in head-first into the steaming hot water.".

The New Jersey native said he had to wear ice skates when he photographed the hockey scenes in George Roy Hill's Slap Shot (1977) and frequently found himself the victim of a practical joke when the actors who played the Hanson brothers (Jeff Carlson, Steve Carlson and David Hanson) used their sticks to trip him.