Unforgettable fire of U2

ANTON CORBIJN first met U2 in February 1982. Then a photographer for an English music newspaper, Corbijn studied up on the band by listening to “October,” their second album, as he flew from London to New Orleans for the shoot. He wasn’t much impressed with what he heard on the cassette, but he really wanted to visit New Orleans.

His photos from that day show four very young, but assured, souls. In one photo, the Edge gazes pensively at the boat deck that will be their stage that evening; a winsome Larry Mullen Jr. looks askance; only Adam Clayton and Bono address the camera. But each in his own way is staring into the future. Tens of thousands of miles, hundreds of photographs and several music videos later, Corbijn, whom Bono credits with giving the band its “visual language,” has put it all together in “U2 & I: The Photographs 1982-2004” (Schirmer/Mosel: 416 pp., $120) a huge collection documenting the band’s rise on the world stage.

Corbijn makes it clear, in captions written in longhand, that he’s never considered himself much of a concert photographer. His is the eye that has defined the band’s look in publicity shots and on album and magazine covers. There are many shots of a trio of maned Irishmen with a hatted Bono looking the other way. A half-smiling Edge in front of an airplane at a video shoot. Stunning photos of the band members in front of a building painted like an American flag. Many of the shots, almost all in black-and-white, have a brooding quality. The few in color have a much lighter feel, even with a subject as weighty as the bandmates posing with their fathers in Dublin in 1999.

Eventually, the foursome assume the pose of assured rock stars. There is a sense of disillusionment in the Death Valley shots for “The Joshua Tree” taken in 1986, although Corbijn now regrets that the photo for the vinyl cover (different covers were made for LP, cassette and CD) portrays an image of a band that took itself and life too seriously. These photographs make you pine for the days when an album cover had a feel to it, was a canvas.

-- Orli Low