Anton Corbijn – MOØDe photo exhibition at the Cobra Museum

The world of fashion through the lens of Anton Corbijn. From 22 December 2023 to 12 May 2024, over 200 fashion-related photographs by this leading photographer and filmmaker will be on display at the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen. The MOØDe exhibition also features portraits Corbijn made of people like Kate Moss, Tom Waits, Alexander McQueen and Naomi Campbell.

In the exhibition MOØDe, Anton Corbijn (Strijen, 1955) presents photographs from his extensive oeuvre (between 1979 – 2023) in which he explores the crossover between portrait photography and the fashion world. In doing so, Corbijn embraces the terms ‘mood’ and ‘mode’ (‘fashion’) in the broadest sense. Corbijn is an admirer of fashion photographers such as Irving Penn, Nick Knight, Peter Lindbergh, Paolo Roversi and Helmut Newton. Whereas these photographers usually do portraits in addition to fashion photography, with Corbijn it is the other way around: he is a portrait photographer who occasionally visits the fashion world.

Photography plays a major role in the global fashion culture and industry. It largely determines how we look at a fashion design and is used by designers to amplify their vision and visual identity. The trendy and ever-changing fashion world collaborates with photographers and visual artists who not only capture reality but also actually create it. For photography, in turn, the fashion world’s distinct visual universe is a very rewarding subject. With MOØDe, Anton Corbijn shows that fashion is all around us.  
 
“I predominantly photograph personalities, but fashion is increasingly part of it. We all decide every morning what we will wear that day, even if it is just a hat or a black T-shirt. Fashion is not always spelled with a capital F.” — Anton Corbijn 

Trademark 
Corbijn’s photos, with their strong contrast and special light as trademark, always manage to command your attention. Also because of his extraordinary compositions and creative way of photographing. He regards himself as a cross between a traditional portrait photographer and a documentary photographer out to record people in their own physical surroundings and social circumstances. He draws inspiration for the dramatic effects in his photographs from the unorthodox documentary work of photographers such as Ed van der Elsken, Robert Frank and Koen Wessing. Time and again, Corbijn manages to surprise and captivate the viewer with his unique perspective on people and musicians in particular.

As visual director behind British band Depeche Mode and through his decades-long collaboration with Irish rock band U2 and American singer Tom Waits, among others, he has left a mark on how we see an important part of contemporary culture.  
 
Besides being a photographer, Corbijn has long been a well-known director who has received international recognition for his music videos and feature films. Corbijn is currently working on a new film called “Switzerland”, starring British actress Helen Mirren as Patricia Highsmith. 
 
Photography book: MOØDe 
The beautiful publication MOØDe in English contains almost 200 photographs from Corbijn’s exhibition of the same name and an essay by Karen Van Godtsenhoven, associate curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The book is published by Hannibal Books and available for € 64.90 at the Cobra Museum’s shop, among other places.

With thanks to  
The MOØDe exhibition came about in 2020  in cooperation with the municipality of Knokke-Heist and was made possible by our partners and generous supporters.