Chapter 6 · 2016–2026: The Continuing Career
MODE UNKNOWN · ANTON CORBIJN · CHAPTER 6 OF 6
The collection · Career timeline
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The later Depeche Mode work
The collaboration continues well beyond Violator. Cover Me in 2017 and Spirits in the Forest in 2019 demonstrate different approaches to the relationship between music and lived experience. The latter places fans’ lives alongside concert performance, widening the story beyond the musicians on stage. The later-years and concert-film guides give this period its own sustained coverage.
2020 onwards: the archive becomes a book
The TASCHEN Depeche Mode volume brought decades of images together, with a limited edition in 2020 followed by the general edition in 2021. A retrospective publication can make continuity visible, but it also risks making a changing practice look fixed. Reading it beside the later videos helps retain the sense of an ongoing collaboration.
2023–2024: new films, distinct credits
Squaring the Circle, released in 2023, examines Hipgnosis. It is Corbijn’s documentary about the design partnership, not evidence that he created its album covers. In Depeche Mode’s Memento Mori period, he directed Ghosts Again and, in 2024, Before We Drown. Other videos require different credits: Wagging Tongue was directed by Sacred Egg with Corbijn’s creative direction, while People Are Good was directed by Rich Hall. The checked directory keeps these distinctions visible.
2025–2026: looking back without closing the story
The 2025 publication Corbijn, Anton and the exhibition programme extending into 2026 bring the photographic career into another retrospective frame. They belong at the end of the present chronology, rather than forcing readers back to an earlier numbered chapter about books. The companion guides remain available for deeper study of publishing, exhibitions, influence and technique. This is the final chronological chapter in the collection’s current coverage; it is not a claim that the career itself has ended.
Further reading
Explore this period in depth
- Depeche Mode: the later years
- Stage design and concert films
- Hipgnosis and recent work
- Books and exhibitions
- Influence and legacy
- Depeche Mode video directory