Anton Corbijn and Depeche Mode, 1986–1990: Building a Visual World
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MODE UNKNOWN · ANTON CORBIJN · COMPANION GUIDE
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The sustained Corbijn–Depeche Mode partnership takes shape in 1986. The band’s official archive identifies A Question of Time as his first video for them. (Depeche Mode official archives) This is the useful starting point for understanding a relationship that would reach far beyond occasional portrait sessions.
A Question of Time
The significance of the commission is structural as well as stylistic. A video creates a world that an audience can revisit. Its settings, gestures and framing can accompany a song across countries, broadcasts and later formats. Once those decisions become recognisable, a director begins to contribute to how a band is imagined between performances.
Watch it as an early chapter, rather than as a rough draft of Enjoy the Silence. The partnership’s later vocabulary should not erase the peculiarities of its beginnings. Look at how people occupy the frame and how atmosphere is produced through movement and juxtaposition rather than through a neat explanation of the song.
The 1987 sequence
Corbijn directed the 1987 Strangelove, Never Let Me Down Again and Behind the Wheel videos. The official archive separates these from alternate versions, including the distinct Strangelove ’88 directed by Martyn Atkins. (Depeche Mode official archives) (Depeche Mode official archives) (Depeche Mode official archives) (Depeche Mode official archives)
That version distinction is not a collector’s footnote. It changes the work under discussion. Two films can accompany the same song and belong to different visual arguments. A collection that silently substitutes one for the other would distort both artists’ contributions.
The useful way to view the 1987 films is as a developing sequence. Note when the landscape becomes more than background, when performance becomes character, and when an image’s appeal depends on leaving part of the situation unexplained. The band can inhabit a strange world without having to supply its rules.
Personal Jesus: physical presence
The official archive credits Corbijn and producer Richard Bell on Personal Jesus. (Depeche Mode official archives) The video’s saloon setting and physical interactions invite a reading in terms of performance, desire and theatrical self-presentation. The musical encounter becomes a social space, with the band participating in its tensions.
There is an important dating distinction: the single was released on 29 August 1989, whereas the archive’s video page labels its release year 1990. (Depeche Mode official archives) The collection preserves that discrepancy in the reference notes rather than silently making the dates identical. A song’s release, a film’s production and a particular distribution version do not always share a date.
Enjoy the Silence: a figure in a landscape
The 1990 video presents Gahan as a wandering king carrying a deckchair. Its extraordinary economy is that the basic situation remains legible at a glance. Costume signals authority; the portable chair makes that authority slightly absurd; the landscape exceeds both. The result can be read as a miniature study of possession and solitude without treating it as a single authorised explanation of the song. (Depeche Mode official archives)
The archive also records a distinctive musical detail: the video uses an introduction unique to that version. (Depeche Mode official archives) This is a reminder that the audiovisual object is not always just the album track with pictures added. A particular edit can become the version remembered by a generation of viewers.
From a campaign to a relationship
By the Violator period, the value of continuity is apparent. The artist can vary setting, colour and narrative while retaining a recognisable sensibility. For MODE UNKNOWN, the critical point is that visual coherence need not mean repeating the same photograph. It can mean returning to a set of questions about intimacy, power, performance and strangeness through different forms.
Strange and Strange Too: the films as a sequence
The 2023 Strange / Strange Too collection brought eleven Corbijn-directed Depeche Mode music films to DVD and Blu-ray, restored from original Super 8 sources, with six previously unseen outtake vignettes. (Rhino) Its importance is not just improved access to familiar clips. A collected sequence lets the viewer experience the relation between films, rather than meeting each one as an isolated upload.
Restoration also makes the material history of a music video visible. A digital presentation can originate in a small-gauge film image, with its own texture and limitations. High-resolution delivery should not be confused with an intention to erase those characteristics. The source format is part of the work’s appearance, not simply an obstacle to a cleaner version.