ANTON CORBIJN - FAMOUZ

Photographer: Anton Corbijn
Foreword: Bono
Publisher: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York
Year: 1997
Edition: First US Edition — First Printing
Language: English
Format: Hardcover with dust jacket
Dimensions: Approx. 26.7 × 36.2 cm
Pages: 145
ISBN: 1-55670-598-0 / 978-1-55670-598-4
Illustrations: Over 100 black-and-white photographs
Condition: Very Good. Light handling wear to dust jacket and covers; interior clean and well preserved. Binding firm.

Famouz: Photographs 1975–88 is a defining photobook by Anton Corbijn, documenting the formative years of his career and the emergence of a distinctive visual language that would fundamentally reshape the representation of musicians in photography.

Spanning more than a decade, the book brings together portraits of influential musicians and cultural figures photographed between the mid-1970s and late 1980s. Among the subjects are figures from the worlds of rock and popular music including Tom Waits, Siouxsie Sioux, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Bono, Kate Bush, Sting, Leonard Cohen, and others. Rather than functioning as conventional promotional imagery, the photographs present these figures through an atmosphere of restraint, ambiguity, and psychological distance.

Corbijn's photographic language is immediately recognizable: deep shadows, pronounced grain, strong contrasts, and a restrained tonal palette define the majority of the images. Working almost exclusively in black and white, he strips away the polished surfaces traditionally associated with celebrity photography, allowing his subjects to appear vulnerable, detached, introspective, or unexpectedly ordinary.

This rejection of conventional glamour became central to Corbijn's approach. His photographs do not simply identify famous musicians; instead, they construct a particular atmosphere around them. Expressions, gestures, posture, clothing, and surrounding environments become as important as the identity of the subject, creating portraits that often feel closer to psychological studies than publicity photographs.

The book's importance also lies in the way it established a new visual vocabulary for music photography. Corbijn's images helped move the genre away from the polished aesthetics of the entertainment industry toward something more personal, atmospheric, and deliberately imperfect. His photographs could function simultaneously as portraits, editorial images, and visual extensions of the musical worlds inhabited by his subjects.

The publication is particularly significant within Corbijn's career because Famouz was originally conceived as his breakthrough photobook. The publisher Schirmer/Mosel describes the earlier 1989 publication as the work that brought Corbijn into wider public attention through his radically different approach to photographing rock and pop musicians. The 1997 edition expands that body of work under the title Famouz: Photographs 1975–88.

The book includes a foreword by Bono, further connecting the publication to the music culture that forms its subject. The photographs function collectively rather than as isolated celebrity portraits, creating a visual chronology of Corbijn's development while documenting an important period in the history of popular music and its visual representation.

This 1997 First US Edition, published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang in New York, is presented in a substantial large-format hardcover with dust jacket. At approximately 26.7 × 36.2 cm and 145 pages, the scale of the publication gives the photographs considerable presence, allowing the grain, tonal depth, and atmospheric qualities of Corbijn's negatives to remain central to the viewing experience.

A seminal publication in the history of music photography and the modern photobook, Famouz: Photographs 1975–88 records the emergence of Anton Corbijn's distinctive photographic language and its lasting influence on the visual representation of musicians, celebrity, and popular culture.