He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2,[1][2] having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both bands over three decades.

Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard was born on 20 May 1955 in Strijen in the Netherlands, where his father had been appointed as parson to the Dutch Reformed Church the previous year.

[13][14] Corbijn began his career as a music photographer when he saw the Dutch musician Herman Brood playing in a café in Groningen around 1975.

In the early years of London-based The Face, a glossy monthly post-punk life style / music magazine, Corbijn was a regular contributor.

Corbijn has photographed Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (formerly of Led Zeppelin), Ai Weiwei, Bob Dylan, Joy Division, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Prāta Vētra, Peter Hammill, Miles Davis, Kate Bush, Björk, Captain Beefheart, Kim Wilde, Marc Almond, Robert De Niro, Stephen Hawking, Elvis Costello, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Morrissey, Peter Murphy, Simple Minds, Clint Eastwood, The Cramps, Roxette, Herbert Grönemeyer, Annie Lennox, and Eurythmics, amongst others.

Other album covers featuring work by Corbijn include those for Springsteen, Nick Cave, Siouxsie's second band The Creatures, Bryan Adams, Metallica, Therapy?, The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, The Killers, Simple Minds, R.E.M., The Bee Gees, Saybia, Clannad and Moke.

In 2005 Palm Pictures released a DVD collection of Corbijn's music video output as part of the Director's Label series.

[19][20] The film is based on Deborah Curtis' book Touching from a Distance about her husband and the biography Torn Apart by Lindsay Reade (Tony Wilson's ex-wife) and Mick Middles.

Some of this footage, intertwined with the stories of six life-long fans in the audience, became the film Spirits in the Forest, which was released in theaters worldwide on 21 November 2019.

Both the original work and 80 signed art prints were sold to fund the international edition of ZAM Magazine, an independent platform of African talent.

[39] At this occasion, the Berlinale Special screened the documentary Anton Corbijn Inside Out (directed by Klaartje Quirijns) at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.