Anton Corbijn

Born in 1955 in Stijen, the Netherlands as Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard. Anton Corbijn is 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 over three decades. 

In the 1980s Corbijn forged his signature portrait style marked by high contrast black-and-white images stippled with grain. “Because I like black-and-white,” he says “I already pass the threshold of realism in that sense. The blurriness and the grain that I use, for me, is close to life. I find things that are very static and very sharp and very well-lit and all that is not how I experience life.”