Albert Maysles, who directed some of the most talked about documentaries such as Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter with his brother David, died at his home in New York Thursday night. He was 88.

A family friend, K.A. Dilday, and The Criterion Collection confirmed his death Friday. He had recently been battling pancreatic cancer, and within the last month, he fell ill.

The Criterion Collection said in a Facebook post Friday that Maysles “saw things through his lens” that will never be forgotten, according to Rolling Stone. They added that he was a “filmmaker up until the end” and he will be missed.

Maysles and his brother began their career in the 1960s when they developed several well-known documentaries. The pair tested the conventions of documentary filmmaking by not interviewing subjects, according to the New York Times. Maysles claimed that making a documentary is about “capturing life as it is.”

They obtained movie executive Joe Levine, Orson Welles and the Beatles as their subjects. However, Salesman, a film that follows the story of a door-to-door Bible salesman, and Gimme Shelter, a film about the Rolling Stones’ tour, gave the brothers their first big hits. Gimme Shelter also captured the murder of 18-year-old Rolling Stones fan Meredith Hunter who was killed by the Hells Angels and brought attention to the film.

Maysles was also behind the musical documentaries Monterey Pop in 1968 and The Grateful Dead Movie in 1977 along with Grey Gardens, which depicted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ cousins Edith Bouvier and her daughter living in a squalor in New York. The film held audiences’ attention for decades.

After his younger brother David had a stroke and passed away in 1987, Maysles continued to develop dozens of documentaries. He covered everyone from French artist Christo in the 1990s to Rufus Wainwright in 2009.

His latest film The Love We Make was released in 2011. It was a portrait of Paul McCartney and his 2001 performance at Concert for New York following the World Trade Center attacks. The final film Maysles completed, a film about 93-year-old fashion icon Iris, is scheduled to be released in May.