Photographer and director Anton Corbijn: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Anton Corbijn is a Dutch film director and photographer. He is known as the creator of numerous video clips for famous rock musicians. Most of Corbijn's photographic work was also related to the world of show business. Over the past decade, he has been involved in several major Hollywood films as a director.

Family and early years

Anton Corbijn was born in the Netherlands in 1955. There were four children in the family. His father was a Protestant minister and his mother was a nurse. Maarten, Anton's younger brother, also made a career as a photographer and director. Their grandfather was an art teacher. Perhaps his grandchildren inherited his creative abilities.

Photographer

In the 70s of the last century, Anton Corbijn began to take pictures of famous musical groups for publication in thematic magazines. His photographs were often featured on the cover. Corbijn moved from the Netherlands to the UK, where he contributed to the weekly music publication New Musical Express. He gained a reputation as a talented photographer, photographing many popular singers and actors. The creative union between Corbijn and U2 was especially long. He designed the album covers for this ensemble and conducted reportage shooting during their world tours.

Early on in his career, Corbijn preferred to take black and white photographs, but later switched to color shots using filters.

Director

In the early 1980s, Corbijn focused his creative energies on the music video genre. He shot the largest number of clips for the group Depeche Mode.

In 2007, Corbijn made his debut in a big movie. He produced and directed a biopic about Ian Curtis, frontman of the British rock band Joy Division. The painting, titled Control, was based on a memoir written by the musician's widow. The title role was brilliantly played by little-known actor Sam Riley, who was nominated for prestigious film awards for this film and received special critical acclaim.

A dramatic film about a talented musician suffering from epileptic seizures and difficulties in his personal life, it was decided to make it black and white. This idea was put forward by Anton Corbijn. The early part of his photography career was also done in this style.

American

Corbijn attracted the attention of Hollywood producers. In 2009, they invited him to take the director's chair on the set of the thriller The American. George Clooney was chosen to play the lead role. After the premiere of the film criticspraised his acting. In their opinion, he managed to create on the screen the image of an unusual emotionally impenetrable personality. The artistic merit of the painting as a whole also earned the favor of experts. The film is a twisted spy story filled with drama and hidden symbols. The box office performance of the film met the expectations of the creators, which indicates a positive acceptance of it by the audience.

The most dangerous man

The first successful experience of directing in big cinema opened wide opportunities for Corbijn. His next Hollywood film was a spy drama based on a novel by famed British writer John Le Carré. The picture called "The Most Dangerous Man" was filmed in 2012. The main role in it was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, for whom this film work was the last in his life. The image of one of the heroes of the film was embodied on the screen by Russian actor Grigory Dobrygin.

Le Carré's book is set in a world of secret services that do not adhere to generally accepted moral standards and do not disdain any means to achieve their goals. The works of this author usually describe spies from different countries, waging an eternal and hopeless war among themselves. Anton Corbijn did an excellent job of recreating the atmosphere of Le Carré's novel in the film and received exceptionally high critical acclaim for it.

Life

In 2015, a new biographical picture was released. She talks about the friendship between the legendaryactor James Dean and Dennis Stock, photographer for Life magazine. Anton Corbijn for the third time was invited to work as a director in a Hollywood project. Life was a commercial failure and received mixed reviews from moviegoers. Unfortunately, once again filming the story of a cult personality, Corbijn was unable to repeat the success of his debut film "Control".