Part of Hamburg's Triennial of Photography, "Anton Corbijn: The Living and the Dead" showcases the Dutch photographer's timeless portraits of music idols — often deceased — from the last 40 years.
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'The Living and the Dead': Life's work of photographer Anton Corbijn
From the Rolling Stones to PJ Harvey, Nick Cave and Johnny Cash, Dutch photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn has immortalized a gamut of musical idols. A retrospective in Hamburg celebrates his diverse oeuvre.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Reinhardt
'Music was the biggest thing for me'
This image of Anton Corbijn standing at the Hamburg retrospective in front of his classic portraits of Johnny Cash and the band Nirvana — both taken in 1993 — symbolizes the love for music that has so inspired the Dutch photographer across 40 years. "Music was the biggest thing for me," he once said. Many of his works are showcased at the "Anton Corbijn: The Living and the Dead" retrospective.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Reinhardt
Born photographer and filmmaker
He would later work with Depeche Mode and U2, but Anton Corbijn began as a self-taught photographer. He was born on May 20,1955 in the Dutch town of Strijen, the son of a pastor. From the early 1980s he moved from photography to music videos. In 2007, Corbijn rose to global prominence as a feature filmmaker with Control (pictured), about the life of singer Ian Curtis from the band Joy Division.
Image: picture-alliance/Capelight Pictures/Rogers
First great love: Music
Music fascinated the introverted Corbijn from his early youth. For him, the camera was a social tool which helped him overcome social barriers and connect him with his favorite artists. The camera allowed him to drop his reserved guard and, through photography, led to deep connections and friendships with his many subjects — including Irish band U2.
Image: Reuters/H. Hanschke
Second great love: Photography
Corbijn's black-and-white photographs always speak in the language of melancholy. With a Hasselblad camera he portrayed musicians, painters, models and actors. In 2002 he shot a series of self-portraits, in which he disguised himself as dead rock musicians. Here, he poses in front of a self-portrait which is part of his retrospective exhibition.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. de Waal
Corbijn and post-punk
At 19, Corbijn decided to become a freelance photographer. At the beginning of the 1980s he moved from The Hague to London. One of the first bands he photographed in his adopted home were post-punk pioneers Joy Division. He soon became an in-demand photographer for music bible NME, snapping Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Miles Davis, David Bowie (above right) and many more.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Reinhardt
Corbijn meets Cobain
In addition to Joy Division, Corbijn formed close relationships with the bands Depeche Mode and U2, and began to shoot many of their album covers and direct their music videos. One of his most famous music clips was "Heart-Shaped Box" by band Nirvana, fronted by rock icon Kurt Cobain (pictured), for which he won the 1994 MTV Music Award for best art direction.
Image: Getty Images
Stars on film
As one of the world's most in-demand music video directors, Corbijn has also shot seminal videos for Depeche Mode, The Killers, Arcade Fire, Roxette, Metallica, U2, Nick Cave, Johnny Cash, Mercury Rev, Travis, Bryan Adams, Joni Mitchell and Coldplay (pictured), for whom he directed the clips for the singles "Talk" and "Viva la Vida."
Image: AP
Bono up close
Having shot the iconic album cover for U2's 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, and directed several U2 video clips, including for "Achtung Baby," Corbijn used his inimitable portrait style for this 1996 photograph of the band's singer, Bono. The image can be seen up close at the retrospective at Hamburg's Bucerius Kunst Forum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Reinhardt
New love: Film
His debut as a feature filmmaker was Control — an elegant and grainy black-and-white film reminiscent of the early days of cinema. In his second feature, The American starring George Clooney (pictured right), he stunned audiences with his minimalism and still images of barren and desolate landscapes. The film's striking soundtrack was composed by German pop icon Herbert Grönemeye.
Image: imago/EntertainmentPictures
Old love never dies
In Corbijn's 2014 film, A Most Wanted Man, Grönemeyer (pictured left) stars on screen in a supporting role. The two artists have been friends for 25 years, and Grönemeyer explained: "We are like a pair of lovers. There is a chemistry between us that I cannot quite explain. There are also differences: Anton is a very smart, wise person. I am rather childish, temperamental."
Image: Senator Film
Acclaimed filmmaker
Early in his career, Corbijn could let his photographs speak for themselves. Now he regularly gives interviews at film festivals, such as the Berlinale and Cannes. However, despite his wide popularity as a filmmaker, he once explained: "I like the melancholy side of life and use it as a starting point for my films. I believe that we all live our lives alone."
Image: picture-alliance/Eventpress Radke
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When does photography become art? This question lies at the heart of the exhibition, "Anton Corbijn: The Living and the Dead," a retrospective of a photographer who has skirted the line between art and commercialism throughout his storied career.
Born in 1955 in the Netherlands, the enigmatic Corbijn has made his name not only as a photographer, but as a music video and film director, having produced video clips for the likes of Depeche Mode, U2 and Nirvana in the 1990s before directing the renowned Ian Curtis biopic, Control, in 2007, and the George Clooney spy thriller The American in 2010.
But throughout his career, Corbijn has primarily remained a photographer who has instilled his commercial commissions with an original and deeply artistic eye.
"Photography was the only thing that mattered in my life and I gave it everything," he once said.
The show at Hamburg's Bucerius Kunst Forum, part of the city's seventh Triennial of Photography, juxtaposes the dual tracks of a near 40-year photography career.
Corbijn's artistic and experimental side comes out in the "a. somebody" series from 2002. Here, Corbijn photographs himself in a grainy, family portrait style while posing as dead rock stars like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious or Kurt Cobain in locations around his hometown — some of whom, like Cobain, he photographed before their untimely death.
"You see in the pictures not only me, but always sky," he told the Hamburger Abendblatt of the self-portraits. "The sky above has always played a big role for me, and you can see in the photos the desperation with which I try to portray someone, to be somebody under this sky. I always used to think that I was nobody. I later recognized myself."
Meanwhile, Corbijn's early unpublished "Cemetery" series, created in 1982-1983, employs his signature style to document tombs in a local graveyard.
Both these more personal works inform the artist's ongoing effort to play on the symbolism of the living and the dead — and to dwell on those rock music immortals who live on after death.
Iconic portraits
But among the 119 analogue works on show, the second part of the exhibition — which includes previously unpublished photos — comprises 77 of Corbijn's most iconic portraits of bands and musicians like Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, U2, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave and the Rolling Stones.
Many of the mostly black-and-white photographs were artworks that employ Corbijn's groundbreaking style: framed subjects in natural, unglamorous poses shot in black-and-white, an approach that was then very uncommon in the glitzy genre.
Corbijn fought early on for the creative freedom to realize his own vision when photographing such famous musicians. The result is a unique and often unexpected perspective on some of the world's most oft-photographed faces.
His creative impulse continues to this day. As he told the Hamburger Abendblatt on the eve of his latest retrospective, "I want my life to remain an adventure."
"Anton Corbijn: The Living and the Dead" runs June 7 through January 6, 2019 at Hamburg's Bucerius Kunst Forum and is part of the city's seventh Triennial of Photography.