The exhibition Anton Corbijn: Favourite Darkness at Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien brings together around two hundred works from five decades, including Corbijn’s most famous photographs and a selection of his music videos since 1983, which rather have the look and feel of short auteur films. In addition, the artist has opened up his archive to show for the first time sketches for stage and album cover designs. Anton Corbijn has made history as art director for Depeche Mode, with whom he has worked on a regular basis since 1986, and has literally created the band’s visual identity.
Corbijn has had countless artists from the fields of music, visual arts, literature, and fashion in front of his camera. Many of his photos have become veritable icons—a term, though, that Corbijn, the son of a Protestant pastor and a nurse, is rather critical of. Nonetheless, Corbijn’s upbringing and his lifelong honest and sustained interest in people who create great art are key to an understanding of his visual language. His portraits always show the human behind the celebrity persona: he places his protagonists in unorthodox settings, photographs them up close, and creates moments full of intimacy, trust, and surprise. Typical are the graininess and deliberate underexposure of his portraits. And also in a metaphorical sense, many of his pictures are dark and melancholic.
Anton Corbijn (born 1955 in Strijen, Netherlands) is a photographer, director, and designer now based in Amsterdam.
Anton Corbijn : Favourite Darkness
Until June 29, 2025
Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien
Freyung 8, 1010 Wien, Austria
https://www.kunstforumwien.at/en/homepage
