The Bank Austria Kunstforum museum in Vienna presents the raw, timeless and chiaroscuro-toned work of Anton Corbijn, who has shaped popular culture since the 1970s, between photography, cinema and design.
He is one of the most influential multifaceted artists of his generation. This native of the Netherlands, who lived in London for thirty years before settling in Amsterdam, is taking over the spaces of the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna. Throughout his career, Anton Corbijn – whose real name is Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard – has left his mark on the worlds of music, film, literature, design, art, and fashion with his distinctive signature style. "The sediments of reality in these portraits – fragments of landscape and architecture, various accessories or sets (often seemingly absurd) – are shaded by the photographer in search of an elusive world imbued with a melancholic twilight.""That's the whole point of the 'Favourite Darkness' exhibition, which focuses on this very evident darkness, bringing together 200 legendary works while celebrating the 70th anniversary of the museum's founding," explains Ingrid Brugger, the museum's director.e The artist's birthday is on May 20th.
Dark icons
The museum space thus retraces his career over five decades, starting in London with his first photos for the magazine NME in the early 1980s. Anton Corbijn then quickly expanded his scope, reinventing rock imagery. He created album covers and directed music videos, such as the one for Heart Shaped Box, Nirvana's last album with Kurt Cobain, for which he won an MTV Video Music Award. He is responsible for a myriad of striking images of singers, musicians, and rock, jazz, and pop groups (Miles Davis, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Björk, Johnny Cash, Coldplay…). Those of U2 and Depeche Mode remain undoubtedly the most famous. He designed the iconic visual aesthetic that has been associated with them for almost forty years. Not forgetting those of Joy Division, which was the subject of his first feature film Control (2007), tracing the life of Ian Curtis. His credits also include those of numerous leading figures (Gerhard Richter, Lucian Freud, Nelson Mandela, Ed Ruscha, Ai Weiwei, Kiki Smith, Jodie Foster…).
Contrasting black and white
In his creative process, Anton Corbijn strips away the masks, sculpting shadows through light to transform his subjects into truly spectral figures. His raw, grainy black and white is imbued with textures and contrasts, revealing the intensity of his models' expressions and emotions. This visual poet remains focused on their intimacy, their imperfection, and their humanity, allowing him to transcend conventions and capture a mystical moment, suspended in time. He achieves these effects by using a slow shutter speed, which highlights motion blur within the frame. For this son of a pastor, the visual language is often marked by the influence of religious iconography, reduced to simple yet profound and mysterious forms. Anton Corbijn thus manages to capture their authenticity, placing them in improbable and unusual settings.
From still image to movement
While the exhibition also features lesser-known or previously unseen photographs, the aim of the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna is to highlight the connections between his photographic and cinematic work and art history. The Gartenbaukino in Vienna is also participating in this event. This cinema, considered one of the oldest in the Austrian city, is presenting a retrospective of his work as a director, which also includes The American (2010), starring George Clooney, A man much sought (2014), his final film with Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Life (2015), with Dane DeHaan as James Dean and Robert Pattinson as Dennis Stock, photographer and member of the Magnum agency.
“Anton Corbijn – Favorite Darkness”
Bank Austria Kunstforum, Freyung 8, Vienna (Austria)
Until June 29, 2025
