Sometimes you don't know if your memory is because you really experienced it or because you look at your old pictures. I have a nice picture of myself held up by my grandfather and my father standing next to me. We all have the same name - we're all called Anton Corbijn. That's something I cherish.

Anton Corbijn

Categorized in : Father Memories Nice

Photography was the only thing that mattered in my life and I gave it everything.

Anton Corbijn

photography

I'm a very, very basic photographer. The main strength of my pictures, I guess, is the mood and feel I get out of the people that I meet. But technically I don't think I'm very advanced. That never interested me.

Anton Corbijn

photographer people thinking

Grain is life, there's all this striving for perfection with digital stuff. Striving is fine, but getting there is not great. I want a sense of the human and that is what breathes life into a picture. For me, imperfection is perfection.

Anton Corbijn

perfection want stuff

I work using the Brian Eno school of thinking: limit your tools, focus on one thing and just make it work… You become very inventive with the restrictions you give yourself.

Anton Corbijn

giving school thinking

I don’t crop my images and I always shoot handheld. By doing that I build in a kind of imperfection and this helps to emphasize reality.

Anton Corbijn

imperfection helping reality

My biggest fear always is that I’ll photograph an idea rather than a person, so I try to be quite sensitive to how people are.

Anton Corbijn

trying people ideas

By self-analysis you can not change your character, but you may change your mentality.

Anton Corbijn

analysis self character

My way in for photographing people is really their work. I'm always interested in what people make, and then I photograph the person. Sometimes the person is a disappointment. But that's the risk. It informs me a lot about the character of a person if I know their work first.

Anton Corbijn

disappointment character people

I've gotten used to not looking too far into the future; it's best when you can begin each day anew.

Anton Corbijn

used each-day

Photography has taken me from isolation.

Anton Corbijn

isolation photography taken

I think some people need the assurance of people around them and ideas worked out in advance. I think it keeps me an edge that to be creative on the spot. You have to think of things to do when you meet people. You limit your choices from the beginning. So I don't bring a lot of lenses, cameras, all these elements that can help the picture to a shooting. You confine yourself to, say, one room and you just make it work. You become very creative in that little space. You have left a lot of other options out of the game.

Anton Corbijn

choices people thinking

I think the fact that you have long - term relationships, this is a very unusual thing in the world, and I thought it was fantastic because you build up a trust. Each time you photograph the person, you try to do something else.

Anton Corbijn

trying long thinking

I come unprepared to shooting. I don't have lights, I don't have assistants, I just go and meet somebody and take a photograph. That's really basic, and that's how I used to work when I was 17 or 18 in Holland. I was given very little time to photograph people and I was very scared.

Anton Corbijn

scared photograph people

Body language is so important, as is composition. You can not say something, and then the body reacts, and it says a lot of things dialogue can also say.

Anton Corbijn

language body important

With photography, you are lucky if you get people to look at your pictures at some point. There's no formal way to show them.

Anton Corbijn

lucky photography people

I have such a love of good music that I find even melancholic music uplifting. Maybe I'm a rare breed.

Anton Corbijn

uplifting

My photography is very European. In America, I always get the sense that people are comforted by understanding what they're looking at. Photography's quite clear here [in the U.S.], it's very well-explained. My photography's perhaps not as well-explained.

Anton Corbijn

photography america people

I never really enjoyed getting a portfolio together then sending it out; whereas, putting up the website is quite an enjoyable experience. The net's just a much faster and more modern way to distribute things, and you have to embrace it.

Anton Corbijn

portfolios together way

There's a lot about records that you cannot feel from a CD.

Anton Corbijn

cds records feels

I don't have lights, I don't have assistants, I just go and meet somebody and take a photograph. That's really basic, and that's how I used to work when I was 17 or 18 in Holland.

Anton Corbijn

assistants light photograph