Closer to Joy

Rock photographer Anton Corbijn discusses his intimate, eloquent movie about Joy Division, "Control," and the band that inspired it.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Read more: Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Arts & Entertainment

Oct. 10, 2007 | For more than 30 years, Anton Corbijn has been one of the premiere rock 'n' roll portraitists. You name the major rock star or band -- Kurt Cobain, U2, R.E.M., David Bowie -- and it's likely Corbijn has photographed them at one time or another. He has also directed numerous music videos for the likes of Nirvana, Johnny Cash and, most frequently, Depeche Mode. But he freely admits that the music of Joy Division -- the revered Manchester band formed in 1976 by Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris -- meant so much to him that it made him want to move from his native Holland to Great Britain.

Corbijn, 52, photographed Joy Division very early in his career, and his stark, eloquent black-and-white pictures are perhaps the best record we have of this deeply influential but short-lived band: Curtis committed suicide in 1980, the day before Joy Division was to set off on an American tour. (The remaining band members reformed as New Order.) Now Corbijn revisits the story of the band he's always loved in a feature film (his first) called "Control." (Read my review here.) I spoke with Corbijn recently in Toronto, where he talked about the awkwardness he felt upon first meeting the band he so idolized, his decision to shoot the movie in black-and-white, and how beautiful things can happen even when you're making a movie about tragedy.

I remember seeing "The Big Chill" when it came out and thinking, "I hate these old hippies! They act as if they invented music." But now that I'm middle-aged myself, I find I'm looking for movies or works that reflect my experience of the music that meant something to me. And your movie really does that. I wonder if you could talk about that. You were there, and you knew the guys in the band.

Their music was powerful enough for me to actually move [to another country]. When music affects you, you don't want something very cheap to represent [it] -- so I wanted the movie to have a depth to it.

As I was watching the movie, I kept thinking of those early Beatles photographs by Astrid Kirchherr. I think part of it is that they, like the movie, are in black-and-white, and the texture and the quality of the surface of the image are similar. And maybe it also has to do with the guys' haircuts. But there's also this sense of being there at the beginning of something new.

It may be easy to compare, because it's black-and-white, and it's England. You have the schoolboy kind of thing, with the ties, which was [something like] the early Beatles pictures, wasn't it? A very English thing -- boys have uniforms on at school. In Holland, you didn't have that. You only had the tie on on Sundays, for church. I guess maybe from a distance it looks very similar. But there was a good 13, 14, 15 years between them.

I've talked to people who thought Joy Division was the missing link between the Beatles and Nirvana, which is quite interesting.

It could be. Watching the movie, you realize that the space between the time the Beatles hit and when Joy Division appeared was really not that long.

No -- and it's the same amount of time between Joy Division and Nirvana.

How did you approach making a film about people you knew personally?

I knew [the guys in Joy Division], but I didn't know them very well. I think the impact that my photographs had suggested that we had a very strong and deep relationship. It was a deep relationship in the sense that I really loved the music. But I didn't really know the guys. We met for a photo shoot in London -- it was maybe 10 minutes -- did the pictures. They liked them, so I went to Manchester to do some more pictures, but I was basically observing that day while they were doing the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" video. We didn't go out together a lot or any of that stuff.

I actually have to go back to my pictures to look and get memories back from that period. But there's nothing [at the forefront of my memory] apart from meeting them for that first shoot in London. I remember that quite well, because I really wanted to shake their hands, which you do in Holland to say hello. They wouldn't shake my hand! And they did after I took the picture. I always remember that vividly, because they were kind of heroes, and I'd just moved to England.

I know the guys from New Order now much better, of course, than I did at the time.

Next page: A very English situation seen through European eyes