REAL GONE
Brian Griffin
Post-punk photographer BORN 1948
IN 2017, Brian Griffin told MOJO: “I’ve never pointed a camera at a band on-stage.” He still captured some of the most memorable music images ever committed to film. Raised in the Black Country and trained in Manchester, in 1972 he commenced employment as a corporate photographer. Initially working for Stiff Records, after punk he moved into music, photographing talents including The Clash, Siouxsie, The Specials, Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello and Talk Talk. During post-punk, he created a series of numinous album covers for Echo & The Bunnymen and Depeche Mode, the latter’s Soviet-inspired ABroken Frame so impressing Kate Bush she asked Griffin to do a similar session for her. He regularly demonstrated a remarkable facility to manipulate light in his portraiture, making the exterior seem interior and using twanged elastic and slow exposures in order to, he said, “play with the human mind.” He later worked in film and advertising and curated his archive.