Anton Corbijn curates 'artisanal' group exhibition at Unseen

Touched brings together exclusive work by mostly young artists who are making a name for themselves as part of a countermovement against the digital takeover of photography by returning to the darkroom and experimenting with old photographic techniques to create highly contemporary images.
This attention to the process and the physical qualities, where the hand of the creator is clearly recognisable, is of paramount interested to the Dutch photographer, film director and graphic designer Anton Corbijn.
Corbijn, who was born in Strijen in 1955,  focuses on both the work of established photographers who have been in the industry for some time, as well as on that of a relatively young generation of artists, presenting the work of Dirk Braeckman, Antony Cairns, Gerard Fieret, Adam Jeppesen, Paul Kooiker, Susanna Kraus, Thomas Mailaender, Nerhol, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Miroslav Tichý and Daisuke Yokota.
The exhibition follows on from the Hague Museum of Photography’s forthcoming in 2015, titled 1-2-3-4. Searching his archive, Corbijn selected more than 300 shots of bands and singers from Nirvana, U2 and Nick Cave to Siouxsie Sioux, REM and the Rolling Stones.
Anton Corbijn  has had a major influence on international music and portrait photography by using of an array of photographic techniques in his own practice. Most of his photographs are taken outside the studio and are loosely staged, but then processed with an exacting eye for detail. He regards as influences the 1970s unorthodox documentary photographers Ed van der Elsken and Koen Wessing.
Corbijn’s work as a director of music videos, since 1983, and feature films, since 2007, takes up an increasingly large proportion of his time, whilst making him a name that resonates far beyond the photography industry. But here, in Amsterdam, he is returning back to his first love.
Touched – Craftsmanship in Contemporary Photography is part of the Unseen Photo Festival and will be on display in Museum Het Schip in the Spaarndammerbuurt. More information here.

Tom Seymour

Tom Seymour is an Associate Editor at The Art Newspaper and an Associate Lecturer at London College of Communication. His words have been published in The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, Financial Times, Wallpaper* and The Telegraph. He has won Writer of the Year and Specialist Writer of the year on three separate occassions at the PPA Awards for his work with The Royal Photographic Society.