Anton Corbijn
The high-contrast eye behind U2, Depeche Mode and Joy Division
Anton Corbijn (b. 1955, Strijen, Netherlands) is the photographer and film director who gave modern rock some of its most enduring images. He moved to England at the end of the 1970s, drawn by post-punk, and his early black-and-white photographs of Joy Division became inseparable from the band's austere mythology.
Over the following decades he became a visual architect for two of the world's biggest bands — U2, whom he has photographed since The Joshua Tree (1987), and Depeche Mode, whose look he shaped across sleeves, videos and stage design from the mid-1980s on. His pictures are grainy, high-contrast and weathered, treating musicians as monumental yet human.
Corbijn also directed music videos (Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box," Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence") and feature films — most notably Control (2007), his portrait of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, followed by The American (2010) and A Most Wanted Man (2014).
- Born
- 1955, Strijen, Netherlands
- Role
- Photographer & film director
- Known for
- U2, Depeche Mode, Joy Division
- Active
- 1970s – present
Signature style
Corbijn shoots in grainy, high-contrast, often desaturated black and white, favouring available light and weathered texture over gloss. He photographs stars as mythic but mortal — figures in a landscape rather than posed idols — and that documentary grandeur became the house look of Depeche Mode and a defining register for U2.
Defining covers
The Joshua Tree
U2 · 1987
Corbijn's stark black-and-white portraits of U2 in the California desert — Death Valley, Zabriskie Point — set the band against an epic, empty Americana and began a collaboration that has lasted decades.
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Violator
Depeche Mode · 1990
For Depeche Mode's Violator, Corbijn — by then the band's visual architect — framed the record around a single red rose, extending the moody, high-contrast identity he built for them across videos and sleeves.
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Achtung Baby
U2 · 1991
U2's reinvention in reunified Berlin, told through Corbijn's grid of colour and black-and-white fragments — Trabants, irony and Zoo-era excess replacing the earnest desert of The Joshua Tree.
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Cover evolution
Anton Corbijn · 1987–1991
Every Anton Corbijn cover in the archive
Frequently asked
- Who is Anton Corbijn?
- A Dutch photographer and film director (b. 1955) known for grainy, high-contrast portraits of musicians. He shaped the visual image of Depeche Mode and U2 and photographed Joy Division early in his career.
- Did Anton Corbijn direct films?
- Yes — he directed Control (2007), about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, as well as The American (2010) and A Most Wanted Man (2014), plus music videos for Nirvana, U2 and Depeche Mode.
- Which U2 covers did Anton Corbijn photograph?
- He shot The Joshua Tree (1987) and Achtung Baby (1991), among others, and has been U2's principal photographer for decades.