Anton Corbijn LICHT

With the exhibition "LICHT", Galerie Anita Beckers presents the fifth solo exhibition of Anton Corbijn in Frankfurt.The renowned Dutch photographer and film director shows a selection of partly never-before-published, conceptual works, mostly created in the 1990s, which testify to Anton Corbijn's fondness for experimental photographic techniques.

The photographs were taken using a flashlight as the only light source and, in some cases, further alienated by the use of color filters.Blurry contours and dramatic light effects seem to not only bring the musicians portrayed into the light but also into motion. Like a painter using a brush, the photographer employs the flashlight to gradually bring his models out of the surrounding darkness. The rhythmic movements of the flashlight make the photographs pulse and echo the electronic beats and synth sounds of the music icons being portrayed – including music legends such as Eurythmics, Herbert Grönemeyer, and Depeche Mode.

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With this extraordinary approach, Anton Corbijn gives his portraits a vibrant, almost cinematic quality and incorporates the subjects into a temporal process where breaks, blurring, and overlays are deliberately accounted for. This is done to express the essence of the artists and their musical language beyond the perfect aesthetics of the pop industry. It is precisely in this openness of approach to his models, some of whom he accompanied artistically for decades, that the atmospheric power of Anton Corbijn's image staging lies, capturing the music and fashion world of an entire generation and making him one of the most influential photographers worldwide.Anton Corbijn: "I wanted to reduce everything to the essentials – just the subject and the simplest form of light. The flashlight allowed me to focus on the emotions in the shadows and isolate the person or object from everything else. This creates a sense of intimacy, but also enhances the mystery."

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Anton Corbijn, born in 1955 in Strijen, Netherlands, picked up a camera for the first time at the age of 17 to photograph the local music group Solution at a concert in Groningen. Due to his fondness for post-punk, he moved to London in 1979, where he worked as the lead photographer for five years for the leading magazine New Musical Express. Here, he met numerous artists with whom he still collaborates today – including Depeche Mode and U2.

In 1989, he published his first photo book, "Famouz," and since then, he has published 18 more books. He designs stage sets and album covers and has directed over 80 videos since 1983. He won an MTV Award in 1994 for the video for Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box". In recent years, his focus has shifted to feature films. As the director of "Control" (2007), "The American" (2010), "A Most Wanted Man" (2014), and "Life" (2015), he has gained worldwide recognition. In 2012, he was appointed to the competition jury of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival. He is currently filming his new movie "Switzerland," with Oscar-winner Helen Mirren as the protagonist in the role of Patricia Highsmith.