Anton Corbijn's limited editions
ANTON CORBIJN
This summer Château La Coste is delighted to present Anton Corbijn: Artists & More Artists, the largest exhibition in France to date, of works by eminent Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn.
Considered one of the most celebrated portrait photographers of his generation, Corbijn has produced some of the most powerful pop culture imagery of the 21st century. The exhibition, staged in the Old Store Winehouse designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, features forty large black and white photographs carefully selected by Corbijn, including unseen and rarely displayed portraits of prominent figures from the worlds of art, music and film.
Drawing from three different series, Inwards & Onwards, #5, and Star Trak, the exhibition places a particular focus on portraits of visual artists including Damien Hirst, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lucien Freud, Peter Doig and Ai Weiwei. After flying specially to Berlin to photograph Ai Weiwei, the portrait was taken hastily by Corbijn in the artist’s compound in Beijing, as Weiwei had just received a phone call summoning him to the police station with little indication of how long he might be there – ultimately giving this shot its’ air of zen and unease.
HIS LIMITED EDITIONS
The two editions created by Anton Corbijn for Château La Coste during his exhibition Artists & more Artists belong to the series INWARDS AND ONWARDS (1996-2011). These two editions present Lucian Freud and Marlene Dumas, two artists in their studios. For the square photographs, he again relied on a Hasselblad medium format camera. As it had been the case since the very beginning of his carreer as a photographer, Corbijn retained the technical flaws that resulted from this approach, such as blurred focus, and did not retouch any mistakes. For this series, Corbijn not only photographed musicians, but also artists including Gerhard Richter and Damien Hirst as well as prominent figures such as fashion designers, sportspeople, or politicians.
Most of the portraits in the series were taken at close distance. The images of many artists were produced in their studios. These photographs are certainly not spontaneous snapshots, but « the result of a game played in equal part by the photographer and the person portrayed. The images are staged (…) in a relaxed atmosphere, which Corbijn creates masterfully and with the highest degree of flexibility. »
| Anton Corbijn Lucian Freud, London, 2008, 2023 Inkjet print on Fine Art paper 50 x 50 cm Edition of 75 + 5AP 2,340€ unframed | Anton Corbijn Marlene Dumas, Amsterdam, 2000, 2023 Inkjet print on Fine Art paper 50 x 50 cm Edition of 75 + 5AP 2,340€ unframed |