MODE UNKNOWN

Chapter 4 · 1991–2006: Stage, Theatre and Reinvention

MODE UNKNOWN · ANTON CORBIJN · CHAPTER 4 OF 6

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1993: the body and the stage

The Songs of Faith and Devotion period expanded the scale of Corbijn’s Depeche Mode work. I Feel You and Walking in My Shoes made performance and bodily presence central to their imagery. The Devotional stage and concert film brought another challenge: an image had to operate within the physical space of a show and within the camera’s account of that show.

A wider field of collaborators

His 1993 video for Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box belongs to the same period of heightened theatrical invention. Its authorship should include Kurt Cobain’s visual ideas rather than treating the film as a director’s isolated creation. Corbijn’s work across musicians is best understood as a series of different encounters. Recurring visual interests do not mean that each artist receives the same treatment.

1997: the Ultra sequence

Barrel of a Gun, It’s No Good and Useless continued the Depeche Mode relationship in 1997. Their differences are as revealing as their shared authorship. Unease, performance and humour can coexist within the same campaign. The detailed era essay follows those variations rather than reducing the work to a single dark mood.

2001–2006: identity becomes a performance

The a.somebody project of 2001–02 turned the camera towards Corbijn himself, impersonating musicians who had died. These are staged self-portraits, not recovered photographs of their subjects. They make identification and photographic memory unusually explicit. By 2006, Suffer Well showed the continuing scope for character and invention within his Depeche Mode videos. The next chapter begins with Control in 2007, when a long relationship with music photography became part of a feature-film practice.

Further reading

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