Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn
Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaardis a Dutch photographer, music video director, and film director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2, having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both bands for almost three decades. Some of his works include music videos for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence", U2's "One", Bryan Adams' "Do I Have to Say the Words? and Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box", as well as the Ian Curtis biographical film...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth20 May 1955
There are some elements of digital photography that I don't really like, such as the fact that you see the results immediately.
Mandela is just the eternal man. You want that man to be around forever. It's the closest thing we have to God, I think. He's the father of mankind, almost.
I'm not educated as a filmmaker, so it's quite a jump for me.
I didn't really know how to make a film when I made 'Control'. I had to create my own language, just as I did when I started taking photographs. I never studied either one.
It's so easy for people to stick a label on you, and then that taints everything you touch.
I feel a responsibility to myself, and not so much for the world at large. Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.
I wanted to do a film for a while, but I never found a script that I felt I was going to be the right person for; because if you've never made a film, you're not taught how to make a film, and you feel like you lack skills.
For me N.M.E. was a very big thing. When I first came to the United Kingdom I started taking pictures for them and I became their main photographer for five years, and that's really been the basis of everything I've been doing since.
Film was something that I didn't see as a step up from music videos, though obviously, music videos, the fact that you work with a crew and a film camera, are the closest to film I've ever been. That is the only schooling I've ever had.
When you make a movie, you know you're making a long-form thing, so the visuals are different than for a video where it has to be more obvious or in your face, I think, a little bit.
My photography changed from being more documentary-like to arranging things more, and that came into being partly because I started doing music videos, and I incorporated some things from the music videos into my photography again, by arranging things more.
You always want to come back with an image that's interesting visually, and you hope to get something from the person you photograph that's different than other images you know of these people.
Generally my focus has been on people who make things, whether it's writers or directors or painters or musicians.
In England, I'm already labeled a rock photographer, which is a little insulting, because I'm not a rock photographer at all.