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Do you lie on the couch sometimes? - Yes, I do.

Doesn't seem like your thing at all. - I enjoy it.

To lie and think during the day about...

But I'm not here that often during the day.

So what do you do?

When I'm lying here, I think about what I'm doing...

...and where I am.

I've noticed this house is a bit too big for me.

I grew up in parsonages. We didn't have money back then.

But we always lived in large houses belonging to the church.

Ladies and gentlemen...

Your royal highnesses, Anton...

...ladies and gentlemen...

We're proud to welcome you to the opening of an exhibition...

...which has a special meaning for us.

Anton is a magician.

They've all surrendered to you, big musicians and artists.

They submitted willingly to your smoky, brown, contrasting...

...but intelligent and gentle images.

Portrait art is somewhat voyeuristic:

We look over your shoulder. We would have loved to hear you...

...convince Iggy Pop to crawl naked through Central Park.

We hope that you expose something a model doesn't want to relinquish.

Anton, continue your magic.

Most things and the best things have been said.

What you see here is the result of the journey I've made...

...and my search for answers.

The journey you make, is a quest for yourself.

I think the music started to mean so much in my life...

...that I really wanted to become part of that world.

By coincidence, this happened because I took a photo.

I thought: "This is great."

And it took off from there.

My subjects were musicians. That's the only thing I was interested in.

Gradually, I developed a love for photography in itself.

The intensity with which some people were making music...

...and that they sang with, really appealed to me.

That was the only thing that they were living for.

That appealed to me, so I had a connection with people like that...

...because photography was the only thing that mattered to me in my life.

And I gave it everything.

What music can give you is that you aren't the only one who feels like that.

It felt like some sort of camaraderie.

You'll see that tonight with Arcade Fire too.

They play music that brings everyone together. It's amazing.

When I was a teenager, about 16 or 17...

...I came home and went to my bedroom where my record player was, my music.

I had a tape recorder and recorded music.

I exchanged music with school friends who also loved music.

It became an important way of spending my time.

I studied album covers and listened to music a lot.

My English was bad so I couldn't understand all the lyrics...

...but it was about the feeling it gave me.

This romantic idea of taking a camera somewhere and then coming back.

Recording a piece of the world and bringing it back to your world.

That's something I've always liked.

"I made this, I took this piece of life and brought it back here."

My first film is "Control".

My first two films are about loners too.

I sometimes fulfill that image, but...

...I don't really want to. I don't want to be that person.

"Control" is actually a love story...

...about a boy who doesn't really know what he wants and then becomes a singer.

He's really stuck into all sorts of...

...traditional customs.

Quite bourgeois.

On the other hand he's drawn to a much more progressive avant-garde.

And because of the situation he's in...

...he becomes very unbalanced. And in the end...

...he commits suicide.

The big emotion was that...

...I had worked with that guy and had gone to the UK.

So my life had changed a lot, because I was drawn to that music.

The magic of that music and that band.

"The preacher of Hit didn't know where to shit."

Anton gave me this book when I turned forty.

He even printed it himself. That makes it quite special.

They're beautiful pictures with a very sweet dedication.

You can feel everything again when you see pictures. Isn't that beautiful?

Yes, this is pathetic.

The family going camping.

I think it's because we weren't very verbal at home.

We just didn't talk much. And we were...

My parents weren't at home a lot.

I think that we all were...

...lonely souls in a way. All of us children.

I really notice that...

...with my brothers too. We're all rather...

I felt lonely a lot. I think that Anton...

I'm sure, Anton felt lonely a lot.

Because he was so lonely, he developed different ways of...

You're on your own and have no one to talk to. Then you start looking.

You notice things and maybe you experience something in those images.

He sat under a bridge by himself imagining a different life.

He always sort of withdrew into his own cocoon.

I'm going to film the pulpit from here.

It's hard to explain.

But looking at things in a certain way comes naturally to me.

In the past, I used to blink and see things jump back and forth...

...closing one eye and opening the other.

I think that was...

...already in me. Composition, a certain way of seeing things.

I don't know how easily one can learn that stuff.

But the great thing is that you can see great beauty in things.

The disadvantage is that ugly things also catch your eye and annoy you.

But this place is much more beautiful than I remembered.

It's great to work with Anton.

That's why he has a close bond with his subjects.

It's amazing to see how his eye works, and he's so fast. It's very special.

He sees so much.

Yes, I think that's awesome. It's awesome he can do that.

And you can only achieve that with hard work.

I think he's a fighter. He's hard on himself, Anton.

He's always looking for new challenges.

To put it bluntly, he doesn't have time for a family life.

What little family life he has, revolves around his immediate family.

We're a part of that and I think it's a kind of refuge.

He stays there for a while, but usually only briefly.

We enjoy each other's company for a moment.

My mother was always working.

And 'cosiness', which is such a typically Dutch concept...

...she didn't have that at all.

Her mother died when she was young, and she didn't get to know that either.

I was with her this week and when I left she said: It was great to see you.

I can see the loneliness in her eyes and that's pretty rough.

I gave her a hug and in the past she used to stand like this.

But this time she held on to me and she kissed my neck.

It touches me. I love my mother too.

Strange. This is very strange.

I don't want to be seen on film as the weak, emotional little sister.

Here she goes again. Emo.

Emo Aaf. Anton will say: You're probably going to cry again?

Fourteen hours? - Yes.

When my father died, Anton and I cried together for the first time.

We were holding each other. That was beautiful. Very special.

That was very special.

I can remember him breathing his last breath and we looked at each other:

"Is he dead?" It was very strange.

It was over. His soul had left him.

It was a beautiful death for a minister. His soul flew away.

I think I was very drawn to...

...people who undergo creative processes.

I always called it 'the pain of creation'. That's how I looked at it.

Great expressions on stage come out of something else than creation.

I thought: These people torture themselves for a long time to arrive at words and music.

The process I went through to make what I did...

...meant everything to me. I devoted myself to it completely.

It's also a feeling of struggle and figuring something out.

I think I identified with that.

You put something of yourself in your photography.

That makes your work different from someone else's.

That's what Bono used to say.

That I'm taking pictures of myself.

That I use them to create an image of myself.

I made a few self-portraits here.

One as Jeff Buckley and one as...

... Janis Joplin.

My room was up there for a while.

I did self-portraits as the Beatles.

George Harrison here.

And John Lennon in the back garden. My love for music started here with the Beatles.

So I did that around the parental home.

The cemetery.

Here I had a dock for my canoe.

I never went to the cemetery. I used to canoe around the trees.

The trees around it made it look like something of a jungle.

Everybody in my family was afraid of snakes and crocodiles.

So that was all I could think of.

Not knowing that there were very few crocodiles in here.

I used to hang out here.

I'd sit under the bridge to catch tadpoles or hide.

I don't know why but I used to hide a lot.

The pictures that we've made of Lou Reed and Metallica...

...are for a project called "Lulu", which is a German theatre piece.

It's a well-known piece. The main character is a woman, Lulu.

It's about sex and death.

And violence too.

Lou Reed's voice together with Metallica's James is fantastic.

They just happen to go together very well.

The heaviness with which Lou Reed sings, usually he doesn't really sing.

It's almost spoken.

So you have Lou's monotonous voice with Metallica's music underneath.

It's pounding.

There's already a lot of violence in just the music.

And the lyrics contain the sex and the blood.

It's very difficult to convey this in a picture.

When I was driving around Gothenburg looking for locations, I saw the ship.

It was a fantastic ship. Rusty, but with some blue as well.

And it had this really heavy cable.

So I saw this as heavy metal.

But it had the shape of a mouth. It looked both feminine and hard.

There's very little sex in my work, I think.

I'd like to have more in it.

There's more death.

There's a realization of death, not so much death itself.

The realization...

...of the relativity of life or the importance of moments.

The fact that it will end, makes that you have to deal with things in a certain way.

I tried to get rid of that, because it was a big part of my work.

The Protestant element, you know.

But I didn't succeed. It keeps coming back.

It makes my work into what it is.

Although you could also say: It's exactly the opposite.

Because my way of rebelling has been that I do love icons.

And that's something that's lacking completely when you're raised in...

...the Dutch Reformed Church. Our walls were white in that respect.

The amplifier doesn't work so I can't play anything here now.

I'm drawn towards going through things...

...by myself, which can be hard.

I think that's something from way back.

But I'm not lying on the psychiatrist's couch now.

I'm usually not unhappy.

I used to be much unhappier when I was in my teens and twenties.

But looking back you realize...

...you feel kind of at home in thoughts of unhappiness.

It's odd. That becomes very attractive.

You feel at ease in a negative or lonely way of thinking.

I'm still not a person who loves going to parties. Even dinners are hard.

I'm always afraid the conversation will flag.

My thoughts always wander off.

I don't always remember what people say, because I somehow...

...get distracted.

I get hold of one word and start thinking about it...

...and I don't hear what people are saying.

Then my brain loses track of the conversation.

It's not meant as a throwaway line. - I see.

There's jealousy in it? - No.

Before she shoots him she wants to know whether he's had his last supper.

Whether it was food, bread, sex or wine.

My father liked it best when I made the sort of pictures...

...that gave you the feeling you got closer to the core element of the person.

Apart from that, it was a world that meant nothing to him.

These entertainers and artists lived in a world with a lot of money.

He saw how hard I worked.

He wanted to keep me from seeing that as a temptation.

Travelling around the world with a camera is a weird way to live, of course.

Many mornings you look at a different view from your hotel room.

There's a whole script that you can go through.

That's an awesome door.

It's good, isn't it?

These need to be switched around.

I put an arrow with it on the card. I put them the wrong way.

It's turning into a triptych. - Yes, it is.

But it's nice to have one large-size face among them, like here.

My work is not quite perfect.

Maybe something from life is still in there.

Because perfection often takes the breathing from the work.

These are subtle nuances, of course.

They may not really be tangible. But I think my work is still breathing.

It is this combination of insecurity, ambition and a vision on things...

...that leads to this result.

How you look at a photo is determined by whether you use this grain.

I've always thought it felt as if you take a split second out of life.

It's about just before and just after. It just goes on, with that grain.

That's the fabric of life.

REJECTED

I think his work is just... he's really wrapped up in it.

Everyone always sees the glamorous side of things...

...but of course it takes a lot of hard work.

With very weird people sometimes. Incredible egos.

His strength is that somehow he knows how to get what he wants.

And always be on top of it himself.

If Anton's idle for too long he'll start thinking.

Perhaps it's an escape, but fortunately he's successful doing it.

It works out for him.

I worry about Anton a lot.

So do I.

In what sense? - Because he works ridiculously hard.

What do you worry about? - His health.

That he's going to collapse and that it will be too late.

That he won't be able to work for a long time.

That would be hell for him. - That would be very bad.

I'd like him to go on holiday.

He's encapsulated in his work. It's almost as if he's in a cocoon.

He spins all over the world and he goes about his way.

Then he'll spend three nights...

He's somewhere, has a few hours of sleep and people keep tugging at him.

It all takes up energy.

He just keeps going. Your body will quit some time.

Don't forget that the film already has a lot of publicity and that involves a lot.

But he doesn't stop with his photography. So a new series...

...has to be coordinated, printed, frames have to be picked out.

Then there will be shows, going to galleries.

That keeps going on while shooting the film.

And a book about Tom Waits and a G-Star campaign. It never stops.

It's just incredible.

That's not really in focus.

That's not the full image.

Mr Corbijn, may I ask you one question? - Sure.

Why did George Clooney say yes to the script?

He liked the script and thought the director was okay as well.

First the two of you.

It is a great script.

There's a gap.

Of about six weeks now. That took quite a long time.

I'm getting better very slowly, I think. I was unable to do anything.

I had to cancel many things in the coming period.

I'm going to use the next months for myself.

I'm usually up there.

I always look down.

I look at the Dutch coast. I think it's beautiful.

I usually see it from there, from a plane.

If I'm not mistaken, those are weeds.

Nettles.

How are you? - I'm fine.

I feel a bit lonely sometimes, that is making me pretty alone.

That's why I'm here. - Nice.

Here's a bit of spring. - Yes, nice. Beautiful flowers.

I'll get you a vase.

I haven't played for such a long time. I just don't get around to it.

We played a few weeks ago.

Oh, I've made a mistake!

Was I a difficult boy, or was I just as agreeable as I am now?

You're very different as a child. You had a strong will.

You probably still do.

That never disappears, I think. - I hope not.

I don't mean it in a bad way. - I see it as something positive.

But it's in your nature. Right?

Anyway, that's...

You were all very different.

It was very hard on you when I quit school and became a photographer.

Mum and dad had a hard time with that. - Yes.

We didn't realize what it was all about.

No.

I think... - But they agreed to it.

You agreed to it, yes. You and dad.

Was I already...

No.

You and dad said:

We would prefer you went to school but if this is what you want, then go ahead.

I remember us talking about that.

They could choose their own profession, but it worried me at times.

You think: What will happen to them? Will they be able to make a living?

I managed. - Yes, pretty well.

But you don't know that when you start.

Of course it's a field...

It can go different ways. It can go wrong...

You weren't disappointed that none of us wanted to study theology?

No, I don't think so.

You had a free choice. - Didn't dad mind?

No, that doesn't bother him.

A person's nature is more important than the profession they choose.

Everybody in our family was a minister: Your father, your brothers...

... Uncle Wim.

We didn't have many visitors. - No, in our family. It was almost a theme.

Ep Lourens.

That was a whole different matter. - Yes, but...

We were in love but my parents were against it.

It's funny now but we always remained friends.

I don't hear from him anymore. - He's passed away.

Is he... - Yes, even before dad.

Anyway, he was a good friend of mine.

My parents didn't want me to marry him.

You didn't feel like doing that anyway?

I was too young for that. To go against my parents.

I was crazy about him. - You were happy with dad, weren't you?

You were happy with dad?

No, that was a different...

You were good friends with my father. - My dad.

Your dad? - Anton.

Yes, but in the back of my mind... - Right.

We weren't allowed, so...

Oh well, I got old and happy anyway.

These are both important things.

I think it's a good thing to ditch a lot of stuff.

It's very healthy to take a fresh look at things.

But you haven't done so yet. - No, not yet.

So I think I'm procrastinating, but I am building a studio.

And I am talking about it, so that eventually I'll have to go through with it.

But you are the kind of person who sticks to what he knows.

Yes, but within those limits I do develop myself.

So it's not as if I'm doing the same things I did 20 years ago.

I find new ways to work within the way I approach things.

And I still find it interesting to meet certain people.

But I'm approaching the limits of that approach...

...and that voyage of discovery.

So, yes, I'm looking forward very much to continue.

You don't make it easy on yourself.

That's all relative, I think.

This is where daylight will come in.

This is a kind of cold corner, but I'm keeping the walls like this.

In May, we're moving everything from England to this place.

This is going to be my office.

I don't know when I'll take photos here.

The idea is that I have this place.

Maybe one day I'll want to use it.

Going to see people has always been an important part of my photography.

If people come to your studio, you have to create something there.

I don't know if I believed in myself. I think I liked to rely on coincidences.

Maybe I also looked for something outside myself that I could blame.

I feel that as a human being...

...I'm not good enough.

Maybe I dealt with this by thinking I was good enough as an artist.

But I believe that as a human I sometimes lagged behind.

It has to do with...

...the lack of a deep connection with other people.

Maybe photography doesn't offer a deep enough connection...

...and everything is focused on that.

What is so difficult about establishing a deep connection?

What is keeping you? - I am.

Shall we go inside?