The artist is present. He looks like one of those rock stars with whom he usually spends film, the elusive gesture, the spiked hair, rigorously black. In the image, taken in London, he is 32 years old, his career — and life — ahead of him. Almost four decades later, the only known self-portrait of Anton Corbijn finds its place in Artists and More Artiststhe retrospective of the Dutch photographer (Strijen, 68 years old) at the historic Château La Coste winery that is announced as the largest exhibition of his work ever seen in France, also coinciding with the festival Rencontres d’Arles. The matter has a crumb, first because the selection of the works to be exhibited is his, in a self-curated plan, and second because, allergic to categories and labels (portrait artist is the only one who accepts), he has not hesitated to include himself as one more among the artists and more artists that he has been portraying for almost half a century. “Artist is an important word. Saying that I am seems a little strong to me, although I suppose that, in a way, it is true, ”he admits.
Orchestrated in the Provençal domains of Northern Irish hotel magnate Paddy McKillen, the show combines portraits from the series Inwards & Onwards (2011), #5 (2017) and star track (1996) never before called for exhibition or hung on very rare occasions. The choice of images (and their protagonists) is capricious, but above all nothing obvious: Richard Prince, Marlene Dumas, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Anselm Kiefer, Ai Weiwei, Lucian Freud, Steven Spielberg, Damien Hirst… “I started with the musicians and over the years I jumped into other creative disciplines: painters, writers, filmmakers, people I wanted to meet. My life has been enriched by them, ”says the photographer, who answers a video call from the kitchen of his studio in Amsterdam. “Hence the title Artists and more artists. It has its grace ”, he certifies.
It has her even more to think that there must be at least one work by Anton Corbijn in millions of homes around the world, even if their owners have not even noticed. War, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, Rattle and Hum, Achtung Baby and Popfrom U2. Automatic for the Peopleof R.E.M. long live hatefrom Morrissey. into the fireby Bryan Adams. Devils and Dustby Bruce Springsteen. sublime illusionby Eliades Ochoa. Divaby Annie Lennox. Jumpin’ Jiveby Joe Jackson. Boomerangfrom The Creatures. YEfrom Metallica. Airby José Mercé. seven deadly sinsby Marianne Faithfull. The Boatman’s Callby Nick Cave. Strippedby The Rolling Stones. Vienna, from Ultravox. All Depeche Mode albums and singles from 101. The history of pop and rock of the last 40 years told through the covers of emblematic albums, sentimental education of several generations. “That is what I have always liked about publishing in magazines and newspapers, that anyone can see your work accidentally, without having to look for it on purpose. And I understand that the same thing happens with album covers, ”she concedes.
There is something of a reporter in his approach to his subjects, although he considers himself a documentalist rather than a photojournalist. “I find it nice to look at an image and realize that time flies. That building no longer exists, those cars are no longer made… The good thing about a photograph is that it tells a story”, she affirms. And then he reflects: “I don’t know if we have a complete perspective on the issue, but it seems to me that in the 1970s and even in the 1980s we had more freedom to photograph. Today, the image of the people is so protected that everything becomes uphill. Not long ago, in a review of one of my books, someone wondered how I was able to get past the public relations filter of an artist to make a portrait. Well, public relations don’t exist in my world. If I have to ask a PR for permission, it means that things are not working”.
Officially, Corbijn counts for photography from 1979, when he moved to London at just 24 years old and got a place on the weekly staff New Musical Express. Over the next two decades, the golden age of the music press and the modern/underground-type coolie The Face, he will portray the princes —and the beggars as well— of the scene, experimenting with that hard-grained black and white, highly contrasted, with almost no grey, which he will make into the highly recognizable and even more imitable trademark of the house. Her color treatment, saturated to the point of unreality, has also created a school: “When I shoot in black and white, I know perfectly well how the photograph will turn out, but in color it is always unknown. The truth is that I have never really known how to photograph in color. At first I didn’t like the result, so I decided to try it in a more graphic way, using a process popular in the 90s, cross-colors, which produced more powerful images. Now that intensity interests me less and less”. He still uses analog cameras, with a slow shutter speed capable of capturing the precise movement, the gesture appropriate to reality. “Imperfection is more like what life is than perfection,” she says. Let’s not even talk about digital techniques and artificial intelligence: “For me, the human factor is not only important, but decisive in everything we do. Humanity possesses that element of imperfection that I personally appreciate and celebrate. What I certainly would not like is that someone could use a clever program to create a photograph of Anton Corbijn, I would find it insulting. Perfection, in any case, is overrated. Only imperfection is human.”
The son of a Calvinist pastor, the photographer acknowledges that much of his aesthetics and not a little of his ethics are a consequence of the strict and austere environment, with almost no iconographic references, in which he grew up. “Although I also think it was my way of rebelling against that environment. Sometimes I think that I would have liked to belong to the Catholic Church, richer and more visually exuberant ”, he says. The last exhibition of him, ikonen (closed last April at the Handelsbeurs, the former headquarters of the Antwerp Stock Exchange), revolved around the need to transcend and our relationship with death. The title here was intended to be misleading. “Certainly not the photographic work that most expect to see from me,” he says with a laugh at this mix of his Cemeteries, a.somebody and Lenin, USSR series: never-before-seen images of cemeteries and funerary monuments he took in Italy in early the eighties, of the visual presence of the communist leader in the Saint Petersburg of perestroika and of himself disguised as music legends who are no longer with us (Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, John Lennon…). “What if I often think about death? Well, it is natural to the human being, part of the process of life. But come on, I’m an optimistic person.”
The bouquet that appears on the cover of the latest Depeche Mode album, Memento Mori, found it in a cemetery flower shop. The death of Andrew Fletcher, bassist, keyboardist and founding member of the British trio, in May 2022, still hurts him. “They gave me the news before he appeared in the press, I was a bit shocked,” he says. “We had already started working on the visual concept of the album, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. i saw dave [Gahan] ya martin [Gore] briefly during the funeral, but we talked later and they told me they were going to go ahead with the LP. The energy, of course, was different, but, strange as it may seem, we were in good spirits”. Corbijn is not only the official photographer of the band since 101 (1989), but also acts as artistic director, ideologue of its iconography (logo included), director of its video clips and creator of the visual montages of its concerts. The fourth depeche, they call it: “In one of the photographs of the interior, in which Martin and Dave are seen from behind in front of the New York skyline, there are three shadows projected on the floor. It’s my way of making Andy feel like he’s still around.”
The photographer has to chain another zoom in less than five minutes, he warns, and we haven’t even talked about his second occupation, that of film director. He began in 1983 making video clips “without the slightest idea of how to use a movie camera” and has ended up signing a handful of acclaimed feature films: Control (2007), biographical account of the legendary singer of Joy Division, Ian Curtis; The American (2010), to the greater glory of George Clooney; the most wanted man (2014), Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last role before he passed away; Life (2015), about the friendship that united James Dean with the photographer Dennis Stock, and Spirits in the Forestdocumentary that follows six Depeche Mode fans as they travel to attend the final concert of the tour Global Spirit, In Berlin. “I guess somehow I had to prove to myself that he was capable of directing a movie. Soon I will premiere another documentary, let’s see what happens ”, he dispatches.
Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell. Iggy Pop and Mick Jagger. Siouxsie Sioux and Neneh Cherry. Kurt Cobain and Johnny Cash. Kate Bush and Kylie Minogue. On his social networks, Corbijn congratulates the birthdays of the living and remembers the anniversaries of the dead, all once subject to his goal: “Unfortunately, people die. It is a reason like any other to upload your portraits to Instagram, although it is enough that I like the photograph. And I have many to choose from.” Of course, he is not going to escape alive from this without answering the question: and those new stars of current music, the Rosalía, the Bad Bunny, aren’t they interested in him? “I come from another time and I think my life would be repeating itself. Yeah, Harry Styles seems like a great guy and he sure would look great on camera. In fact, we have ever talked. Of the young musicians that photographers of his generation take care of. I have already photographed too much”.
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