Anton Corbijn: A Guide to Looking at the Photographs

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MODE UNKNOWN · ANTON CORBIJN · Chapter 16 of 20

This guide takes readers to photographs in artist-representative, museum and publisher collections. The links preserve the work’s original context and credits. They are viewing references; they do not imply that MODE UNKNOWN owns the images or that a photograph can be copied into merchandise.

Joy Division and the withdrawn portrait

Start with the Louisiana interview and its account of the 1979 session. (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art) The accompanying discussion places the photographs within Corbijn’s move to England. Look for the relation between recognition and distance: how much of an identifiable face is needed before an image feels like a portrait?

U2 and the desert

Steve Averill’s illustrated account includes the practical history of the tree photograph and the mirror at the frame’s edge. (Steve Averill Design) Look at the edges as carefully as the centre. A peripheral object can reveal something about the making of an image that its later iconic status tends to conceal.

Depeche Mode across the archive

TASCHEN’s preview provides an authorised selection from the Depeche Mode book. (TASCHEN) Compare formal portraits with informal material and design work. The contrast is useful: a collaboration is not only represented by the most controlled or widely reproduced image.

The conceptual self-portrait

The Fotografiska Berlin page identifies its opening image as a. cobain, strijen, holland, 2001. (Fotografiska Berlin) The person performing that identity is Corbijn. Start by attending to the act of impersonation rather than mistaking the image for a photograph of Cobain himself.

Fashion and the chosen appearance

Museum Cobra’s MOØDe page places fashion-related photographs within the wider portrait practice and includes a credited Supreme image from New York, 2017. (Museum Cobra) Compare the body, clothes and setting: which element first tells you how to read the picture?

Memento Mori

The agency’s Memento Mori selection supplies a direct route into the later Depeche Mode photographs. (2b Management) Look for the relationship between the two figures and the space around them. Then move to Ghosts Again to compare the still arrangement with the possibilities of movement and duration.

Film and publicity

The Life portfolio is a reminder that a film generates several kinds of image. (2b Management) A production photograph, a publicity portrait and a frame from the film may circulate together, but they should not be given interchangeable captions. Ask what kind of object you are looking at before interpreting it.

The retrospective selection

Hannibal’s Corbijn, Anton page offers a broader publisher preview. (Hannibal Books) Use it to move outside the collaborators you already know. A good archive visit should include at least one unfamiliar subject, because recognition can otherwise dominate attention to the actual picture.

A four-question method

For any photograph, ask: what is visibly present; how is it arranged; what account exists of its making; and what am I bringing to it from elsewhere? These questions separate description, composition, evidence and interpretation.

That separation does not make looking less personal. It makes it more precise. A photograph may matter to you because of a song or a memory, while its formal achievement lies in something you had previously overlooked. The most rewarding encounter allows both kinds of attention to coexist.

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