View Rare And Sumptuous Shots Of David Bowie And Naomi Campbell Captured By The Inimitable Lens Of Anton Corbijn, As Presented By Simon de Pury

On August 5,1980, David Bowie wowed new audiences with his theatrical debut, starring as John Merrick in The Elephant Man at the Blackstone Theatre in Chicago. The same year, Bowie celebrated the first of three number-one hits for the single Ashes to Ashes.

The image of 33-year-old Bowie draped in a white loincloth, as captured by the inimitable Anton Corbijn, is forever imprinted on every longtime Bowie admirer. The Bernard Pomerance play, based on the life of Joseph Merrick (his first name changed for the script), tells the gripping story of an extremely deformed man who is rescued from a freak show by a Victorian surgeon. 

Only Bowie could transcend his rock god-sex symbol status to compassionately portray such a tortured character with deep empathy. Only Corbijn’s gaze could immortalize that moment in performing art history with the reverence it deserved. 

“David really embraced the idea that this child had been beaten up and pushed around because of his deformities, and he was much more wary of interacting with people. It’s a significant difference in the way the character was played like that, and I was astonished how well it worked,” Elephant Man director, the late Jack Hofsiss, said at the time. “David understood it, having grown up on the tougher streets of London, and made it very much his own.”

The chilling Bowie portrait is among rarely-seen Corbijn photographs presented by world-renowned Swiss auctioneer and art dealer Simon de Pury. The prints are on view at The Hague, by appointment only, and online at de-Pury.com, between January 24  and February 28, 2022.

Also featured in the stunning exhibition is a sumptuous 1994 nude portrait of supermodel Naomi Campbell in London. Campbell faces the camera, her long hair pulled back by two simple, white baretts, as she bends down to lace a delicate sandal perched on a window sill. It’s a vouyer’s fantasy, elegantly portrayed by a master of fine art photography. 

Though the images are linked only through Corbijn’s singular skill and eye, Campbell and Bowie were close for decades, through his wife and her fellow supermodel, Iman. Campbell consoled Iman following Bowie’s death of liver cancer in January 2016. Iman maintains that she will never remarry, as she is forever Bowie’s wife, not his widow. 

The latest exhibition in the de Pury presents . . series also showcases prints of designers Rick Owens and Donatella Versace. The ongoing collaboration with international artists stages exhibitions from their studios. 

Corbijn, a Dutch photographer, filmmaker, graphic designer, and video artist, is best known for his black-and-white portraits of illustrious creatives and musicians. Corbijn’s sensual shots are achieved with a slow shutter speed to meticulously arrest gestures and movement. 

Corbijn launched his career as a teenger in the early 1970s, shooting local bands in the Netherlands before moving to London in 1979 to work as a staff photographer for the New Musical Express (NME). His oeuvre includes contributions to Rolling Stone, SPIN, and Vogue, and creating album sleeves. 

Equally clever with moving images, Corbijn effortlessly pivoted into music videos. He directed more than 80 videos for an array of artists including Nirvana, Johnny Cash, Coldplay, Joy Division, U2, and most notably, Depeche Mode. His profound and enduring creative impact on Depeche Mode is revealed in the pages of Taschen’s deliciously dark Depeche Mode by Anton Corbijn. 

Prolific and fluid across genres and mediums, Corbijn shifted into directing feature films, beginning with Control (2007), a British biopic about the life of Ian Curtis, lead singer of late-1970s English post-punk band Joy Division. Building on that success, Corbijn directed The American starring George Clooney (2010), and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final film A Most Wanted Man (2014). 

“Whenever, years back, I was looking at a striking photograph in Rolling Stone, NME (New Musical Express) or any other musical publication, I would check the photographer and it was invariably Anton Corbijn,” Simon de Pury recalled. “Subsequently, I have followed with great interest the unique perspective Corbijn offers both in his work as a photographer and as a director. This current exhibition consists of some of my absolute favorite photographs he has made.  If the fashion world was the stepping-stone for Helmut Newton, it is the music world that was the stepping-stone for Anton Corbijn. Like Newton, Corbijn quickly outgrew his starting block and has become hugely influential across contemporary culture.”

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