IN HIS FIRST FEATURE-LENGTH FILM, THE MASTER MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHER ANTON CORBIJN CAPTURES THE FINAL YEARS AND DAYS OF THE LEGENDARY JOY DIVISION FRONT MAN IAN CURTIS IN THE TRUEST COLORS—BLACK AND WHITE

Anton Corbijn is putting the life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis on a movie reel. Of course, the 52-year-old Dutchman is no stranger to the private workings of the fast and the famous. He’s worked with some of pop’s biggest stars of the past three decades as a photographer, album designer, and music-video director. Having holed himself up in a squat in England in 1979, Corbijn first rose to prominence taking photographs for music magazines such as NME and Melody Maker. In 1983 he moved his tall frame behind a moving-image camera and started shooting videos for musicians such as Palais Schaumburg, Propaganda, Echo & the Bunnymen, and later Nirvana. His most celebrated work was often done with Depeche Mode, for whom Corbijn also began designing album sleeves and acted as the creative director on its tours since 1987. His photographic trademark was to eschew glamour and shoot subjects in black and white and in raw situations. It’s little wonder that the image of Depeche Mode that is first conjured is in black-and-white monochrome. It was also Corbijn who was behind the remarkable transformation of U2 from Irish rockers to international superstars when he masterminded the Achtung Baby visuals in 1990. His subjects always seemed to belong to a different world than the rest of us—where the mundane is the most exciting part of living.

Now Corbijn is making the leap into feature filmmaking with Control, a biopic on the pale front man of Joy Divison, the seminal rock band formed in Salford in 1976. Curtis was only 23 when he took his own life as he struggled to cope with the demands of two women—his wife Deborah and his mistress Annik Honoré—as well as fatherhood, the growing acclaim for his band, and epilepsy. Corbijn is mentioned in Deborah Curtis’s book about her husband, Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division, for the great photograph he took of Curtis on the Atmosphere video in 1979. Corbijn only knew the singer for a short time before he hanged himself in his estranged wife’s kitchen, but his fascination with the singer has fermented ever since. Control stars Sam Riley as Curtis, Samantha Morton as Deborah, and Craig Parkinson as Factory Records owner Tony Wilson. Corbijn first moved to England so he could take photographs of bands like Joy Division. Having made a film about one of the most influential image-makers in pop history, he has come full circle and is in the process of moving back to his native Holland. Kaleem Aftab

KALEEM AFTAB So, the film’s about Joy Division.
ANTON CORBIJN I want to make clear that Control is a film about Ian Curtis, not Joy Division. There is a difference: Ian Curtis is a romantic life—it is a failed life in a sense. A film about Joy Division is something different. We follow Ian from the age of 17 until 23, so 1973 until 1980, and Joy Division happens to be a big part of that life.
KA How do you show Ian’s life away from the band? Do you show the more mundane parts of his life working in the industrial northern towns of the 1970s?
AC We actually filmed in the house in Macclesfield where he used to live. You could walk from the house to the council [local government authority] building where he worked within a minute, so we have the real walk in real time. There is not a lot of change in Macclesfield. We had to make much of the film in Nottingham because Manchester has changed since the 1970s, especially thanks to the IRA bombings [Manchester was targeted several times, most violently in 1996]. In Nottingham we found similar architecture to what they had in Manchester then.
KA This is an especially personal project for you. After all, you actually photographed Curtis when he was alive.
AC For me it’s a bit of an odd story really, because I was a photographer in Holland, a music photographer, but in the few times I’d been to England I liked the pictures I was taking there more. I always felt that in England it was more a choice of life and death to become a musician or not. It was a way out of the gray council estate [social housing in the U.K.] whereas in Holland it was like a subsidized hobby. When I photographed British people I felt like there was a difference. When Joy Division’s album came out in 1979 I just felt like I had to go and live where that music came from. I moved to England in late October ’79 and within fourteen days I had met Joy Division and photographed them. That picture became very famous, but at the time no one wanted it. The band liked it very much and they used one for a limited-edition release in Belgium. Then they asked me to come to Manchester for a day to hang out with them in April 1980 and we did the video for “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” I took another picture with them. Then Ian committed suicide and that picture was put on the cover of NME.
KA Given that Ian Curtis watched the 1977 film Stroszek the night he committed suicide I’ve always felt that Werner Herzog might want to make this film.
AC I had contact with Werner Herzog during the making of this film because I wanted to use some of his footage of Stroszek and some of it appears in the film. I don’t know if Werner realizes the impact that film had on Ian’s life.

TO READ THE FULL STORY, CHECK OUT V48,
ON NEWSSTANDS EVERYWHERE JULY 20, 2007

Photography Anton Corbijn

Control is out in winter 2007 from The Weinstein Co.