Photography exhibit - Anton Corbijn

Last week I went to an exhibition of my flatmates and a few other people's photography in a small cafe in Falmouth. It was interesting for me because I have little knowledge of photography and can only appreciate it to an extent, except her project was to take inspiration from the photography of Anton Corbijn, one of the few photographers whose work I'm actually familiar with for his decades of extremely influential work in music. He also recently directed 'Control', his first feature film, a biopic about Ian Curtis, singer of 'Division' - a great film about a band I really admire.

I have a book called 'Star Trak' that's a compilation of Corbijn's best work with hundreds of legendary musicians that I went through with my flatmate whilst she was doing the project, and it's one of the main influences of my interest in directing music documentaries. This summer I'm planning on making a documentary based around my friends Brighton-based band, chronicling a short tour and the recording of an EP that I'll also be helping to produce/engineer.

Here's an example of one of the photographs from the exhibit and then one of Corbijn's photos of Tom Waits.

Corbijn's work is almost always in black and white and - fittingly, as he works mostly with musicians - generally focuses on the representation of the ego. Masculinity is another theme he commonly explores. I feel my flatmate encapsulated those themes, along with the representation of a teenagers feeling of invulnerability and discovery of masculinity - no darkness falls on him. This photo of Tom Waits above is a good example of Corbijn's work as Waits, arguably, works hard to maintain his enigmatic persona that compliments his distinctive, gruff vocals and seedy, borderline-distasteful lyrics. This photo reflects that well, with his casual, yet closed-off posture and almost threatening stare. He's also the sole subject of the photo, in contrast to one of Corbijn's more current/iconic images of Sam Riley's portrayal of Ian Curtis (of Joy Division fame) in Corbijn's directorial début, 'Control'.

Here he presents all Curtis's naivety, insecurity, curiosity, fear and sense of rebellion/displacement towards society, looking backwards with his rucksack and cigarette and a sense of uncertainty, before heading out towards the seemingly-daunting city of Manchester, which symbolises all of the outside world, adulthood and his own future.

I see Curtis as a true existentialist. Someone that really struggled to find his place in a world he didn't believe in, someone that didn't see any sense in living with the "absurdity" (in Camus' philosophical sense of the word) of a faithless life. And (with Camus' words, as mentioned in a previous post) "judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy", Curtis found his solace in suicide.