Anton Corbijn quotes:

Apart from photography and music videos, I also do graphic design.

I've gotten used to not looking too far into the future; it's best when you can begin each day anew.

My photography changed from being more documentary-like to arranging things more, and that came into being partly because I started doing music videos, and I incorporated some things from the music videos into my photography again, by arranging things more.

I photograph artists, and some of them are very well known, but if you ask the average man on the street, 'Do you like Anselm Kiefer?' He would stare at you with a blank stare, because these are not celebrities. They are celebrated in a specific circle.

Like stories, people have individual lives, and are all caught up in this murky thing. All of them have the best intentions. In that sense, you could just as easily tell the same story from another character's perspective. Maybe that's a good idea for a TV series.

In 1979, I moved to England and photographed Joy Division and Bowie and Beefheart. At that time I got images that I felt had that special, well - power is a big word to say - more like intimacy and ambition that outlasted the photo shoot. I felt that they would have a longer life.

Sometimes you don't know if your memory is because you really experienced it or because you look at your old pictures. I have a nice picture of myself held up by my grandfather and my father standing next to me. We all have the same name - we're all called Anton Corbijn. That's something I cherish.

You always want to come back with an image that's interesting visually, and you hope to get something from the person you photograph that's different than other images you know of these people.

My first pictures are from 1972, and my first proper camera dates back to 1973. During the first year I used my father's camera. It had a flash on it, which I don't like, but I didn't know anything about photography back then, so it was just what I did.

Film was something that I didn't see as a step up from music videos, though obviously, music videos, the fact that you work with a crew and a film camera, are the closest to film I've ever been. That is the only schooling I've ever had.

A lot of scripts that I was given I didn't feel were right for me, because I didn't feel anything for them - I didn't feel like I was going to change in life and start directing.

I only make storyboards for action scenes. Once you make a storyboard, you don't film; it can be a stiff move.

Mandela is just the eternal man. You want that man to be around forever. It's the closest thing we have to God, I think. He's the father of mankind, almost.

When I was younger, I'd buy a vinyl album, take it home and live with it, and I think that attachment's largely gone for the file-sharing generation.

I'm not famous; I am simply very well-known to certain people. Famous is something different.

By self-analysis you can not change your character, but you may change your mentality.

Control' had to do with my own life a lot, and that's why that seemed to be a film I could be the director of, because I had an emotional attachment to the whole story. And because of that experience, I feel that I can try other films. I didn't set out to become a director.

I wanted to move away from Holland for my work because I felt that things would be better for me in England. But when I heard Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures', that pushed me towards making the move and making it real. I met them within 12 days of moving to England.

I don't want to knock photography, and I don't feel that film is up there but photography isn't. I think they're next to each other really, you know. There's an incredible strength to a still picture. Or there can be an incredible strength to a still picture that can outlive you. That can outlive a film.

I love body language.

I've finally become an old guy.

It's so easy for people to stick a label on you, and then that taints everything you touch.

My world is much bigger than music, and that's why I always fight the 'rock' label.

The only advantage of the CD is that you have a booklet that can tell a bit of a story, but the little covers are just boring. I love vinyl, and I have loads of it. It's the same thing as digital photography versus film photography. It's a quality thing.

Working with actors is something I've never done before. I find it tremendous. It's hard work.

I feel that when I shoot anything, and I have something beautiful, I just move on.

Once you make decisions, you can't go back, but in photography, that process can continue. With film, you have to eliminate all the possibilities and make the one possibility work the best for you, so you have to become very creative with the direction you've chosen.

I have such a love of good music that I find even melancholic music uplifting. Maybe I'm a rare breed.

I love body language."

If you make something with love and, you know, passion and you tell a real story, I think it will always find an audience somehow, you know.

Grain is life, there's all this striving for perfection with digital stuff. Striving is fine, but getting there is not great. I want a sense of the human and that is what breathes life into a picture. For me, imperfection is perfection.

I think Amsterdam is to Holland what New York is to America in a sense. It's a metropolis, so it's representative of Holland, but only a part of it - you know, it's more extreme, there's more happening, it's more liberal and more daring than the countryside in Holland is.

I am a village boy, and Amsterdam for me was always the big town.

Analog is more beautiful than digital, really, but we go for comfort.

I don't have lights, I don't have assistants, I just go and meet somebody and take a photograph. That's really basic, and that's how I used to work when I was 17 or 18 in Holland.

There's only one music video that had an emotional impact on me, and that's 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash. That's exceptional. There is no music video I can think of apart from that one that really reaches you inside.

I never really enjoyed getting a portfolio together then sending it out; whereas, putting up the website is quite an enjoyable experience. The net's just a much faster and more modern way to distribute things, and you have to embrace it.

I didn't really know how to make a film when I made 'Control'. I had to create my own language, just as I did when I started taking photographs. I never studied either one.

Directing film is the hardest thing I have ever done.

Photography was the only thing that mattered in my life and I gave it everything.

I'm a very, very basic photographer. The main strength of my pictures, I guess, is the mood and feel I get out of the people that I meet. But technically I don't think I'm very advanced. That never interested me.

My way in for photographing people is really their work. I'm always interested in what people make, and then I photograph the person. Sometimes the person is a disappointment. But that's the risk. It informs me a lot about the character of a person if I know their work first.

Photography has taken me from isolation.

With photography, you are lucky if you get people to look at your pictures at some point. There's no formal way to show them.

My photography is very European. In America, I always get the sense that people are comforted by understanding what they're looking at. Photography's quite clear here [in the U.S.], it's very well-explained. My photography's perhaps not as well-explained.

I work using the Brian Eno school of thinking: limit your tools, focus on one thing and just make it workâ?¦ You become very inventive with the restrictions you give yourself.

Body language is so important, as is composition. You can not say something, and then the body reacts, and it says a lot of things dialogue can also say.

There's a lot about records that you cannot feel from a CD.

I've done an incredible amount of painters. It's an area, for me, where there's more mystery left. I've photographed so many musicians, I've been in studios so often, I know the whole process. The mystery's gone from it. I think it's important to keep mystery into our lives. There's a longing connected with it.

I don't think I treat my film work as an extension of my photography. There are two different sets of rules there.

It's only when people get involved, when there's money involved, that you have a lot opinions around you. I try not to listen to them too much.

For me N.M.E. was a very big thing. When I first came to the United Kingdom I started taking pictures for them and I became their main photographer for five years, and that's really been the basis of everything I've been doing since.

My life changed incredibly when I moved from Holland to England.

The really simple approach to photography is a great balance to making the films.