Anton Corbijn: Moving Pictures

In October 1979, photographer Anton Corbijn, the son of a rural Dutch Protestant minister, set out for England in pursuit of Unknown Pleasures. That was the title of the dark, expansive debut album from the Manchester post-punk band Joy Division, and to Corbijn it was an artistic clarion call. "I thought, 'I want to be where that music comes from,' " says Corbijn, now 52. "It was my mission to photograph Joy Division." Within two weeks he took an iconic picture of the band that showed singer and lyricist Ian Curtis turning back toward the camera, with unwitting portent, while his bandmates faced forward; six months later, Curtis killed himself at the age of 23. Now Corbijn, whose photographs and videos have since defined the unadorned aesthetic of a generation, has retold Curtis' tale in his first feature film, Control, released on — Oct.5. Corbijn says making the film has served to "round off a certain part of my life," in which music has been his prime inspiration; it also offers a powerful new outlet for the narrative gift that has always been his artistic trademark.

It was love of music that drove Corbijn to take up photography in the first place. As a shy, gangly teenager, he would go to gigs on his own and take his father's camera, he says, "purely to get close to the musicians without looking like an idiot." From there, Corbijn developed into one of the most highly regarded photographers of his era, with stars as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, the Arctic Monkeys, Robert De Niro and Clint Eastwood lining up to be his subjects. His portraits have been exhibited in art galleries around the world and in 14 sturdy books. But in fact most of us own a Corbijn: his artwork covers more than 100 records or CDs, and anyone who has watched MTV or VH1 will have seen one of the 80 or so music videos Corbijn has directed for acts such as Depeche Mode, Nirvana and Coldplay.

Much of Corbijn's work is distinctively grainy, black and white or with a sandy brown or metallic blue sheen. It's unglamorous, but that's the point. "For all that kind of stylized decadence in some of his photography, his eye was always mocking it, mocking celebrity," says Bono of U2, whom Corbijn helped transform from a scruffy band of Irish rockers with mullets to global superstars. "It's a Dutch reformer's eye. I don't think he even knows how Protestant he is." Corbijn's relationship with U2 stretches back 25 years and has always gone beyond the role of photographer. For the cover of The Joshua Tree, he took the band to the Mojave Desert. The tree "fascinated" Corbijn, says Bono, so "he just asked us to stand against it. We hadn't figured out he was giving us the name of what would be one of our more important albums."

Musicians have come to trust that visual instinct implicitly. "He has an understanding and an ability to manipulate light, and — far beyond that — a love and desire to perceive the human condition," says Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M. Corbijn has photographed Stipe neck-high in the ocean and once woke him at 6 a.m. to catch the dawn light for a shoot. It's a testament to the respect Corbijn commands that pampered rock stars let him photograph them crawling naked along a riverbank (Iggy Pop), cross-dressing (Dave Grohl) or in a loincloth (David Bowie). They turn to him even in the full knowledge that he is liable to ignore their lyrics and make a video reinterpreting their song with his own narrative. "All my ideas come from the sound rather than the lyrics," says Corbijn. Rather than capturing stars in clichéd poses, Corbijn has always gone to great lengths to tell the story he sees.

In that sense his move to movies couldn't be more natural. Corbijn sees Control not as a typical rock biopic or music film, but as "a tragic love story with great music." Based on the book Touching From a Distance by Curtis' wife, Debbie (played by the Oscar-nominated British actress Samantha Morton), it's a familiar tale: Debbie and Curtis, brought movingly back to life by newcomer Sam Riley, meet and marry as teenagers; Curtis joins the band and, while on tour, begins an affair with an exotic Belgian, leaving Debbie at home to take care of their baby and work two jobs. Racked with guilt at his own infidelity, Curtis' torment is compounded by epileptic fits — often on stage — and a fear of the additional responsibilities of looming success. Joy Division songs such as Love Will Tear Us Apart, heavy with Curtis' anguish and sense of isolation, are framed eloquently in context. And by having the actors perform the music themselves rather than mime to originals, Corbijn captures the energy of Joy Division's shows. Shot, naturally, in black and white, Control has the intense feel of a 1960s British kitchen-sink drama, leavened by Corbijn's empathy for Curtis' plight.

At the film's first public showing at Cannes in May, Control won three awards and critical raves. Morton, who has previously acted for directors like Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen, was similarly dazzled by Corbijn's debut. "His instincts were not just from a visual point of view; I found his development of the character really fascinating," she says. "For someone who's never made a film before to make a film that brilliant, to get the performances he got out of us, and to carry it, I just think he's extraordinary." For good measure, he pulled this off while ultimately keeping the project afloat with his own money, and effectively producing it.

R.E.M.'s Stipe draws the link between Corbijn's departure into film and his "audacious and courageous" move to London in 1979: "For a wildly successful, internationally known artist to shift mediums at the age of 52, and to have Ian Curtis as the subject of his premier feature, I think brings his odyssey full circle."

Corbijn is of the same mind. He really does seem to have completed his musical mission, and perhaps exorcised some ghosts along the way. He's mulling a few scripts and ideas, "none of which are music-related," he says, and he is so determined to start a new chapter that he now plans to leave England and move back to the Netherlands. "I came for Joy Division, I've made my movie," he says. Granted, it took 28 years, but Corbijn still has the time and the passion to recast his powerful vision.