U2 & I

Details

Initially published: 2005-02-06
Author: Anton Corbijn

Description

U2 & I is a collection of photographs, many unpublished, of U2 that was released in 2005. Corbijn first met U2 as a photographer in 1982 when he was sent to photograph the band for British rock paper NME.

Accompanying the photographs in this book are notes from Anton himself, often written in his own hands, as well as stories shared by Bono, filmmaker Wim Wenders, model Helena Christensen, author Salman Rushdie, and former President Bill Clinton among others.

The book was designed by smel, a design studio in Corbijn’s own Amsterdam. In 2008 a smaller edition was published, at a lower price point.

Abstract

For more than three decades Anton Corbijn has photographed the greatest artists in the music world and beyond. That made him one of the most influential portrait photographers of our days. In Corbijn’s career, however, there has been one constant: the band U2, and their collaboration of 22 years. His most recent publication―number seven in the line of Corbijn books published by Schirmer/Mosel―is dedicated to Bono, Edge, Larry, and Adam, to their longstanding friendship, mutual inspiration, and shared experience of rock history that is part of the history of photography. It was Anton Corbijn who “invented” U2’s public image and he is still shaping it. The long way from their first encounter in February 1982 in New Orleans to their April 2004 Lisbon shooting for the most recent U2 album is documented in a wealth of private and so-called official pictures with hand-written annotations by the photographer.