In memoriam: photographer Brian Griffin (1948 – 2024)

British photographer Brian Griffin has died aged 75. Griffin was celebrated for his playful pictures and later work, which appeared on album covers for artists together with Depeche Mode and Echo & the Bunnymen.

Griffin, who was born in Birmingham in 1948, intertwined surrealist motifs all through work that mischievously rethought the company world, drawing on his various inspirations, from the economic influences of his childhood to futuristic movies corresponding to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and Renaissance work.

After graduating from Manchester College of Artwork in 1972, Griffin moved to London and targeted on portraits of musicians together with Elvis Costello, The Jam, Queen, Ringo Starr, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees. He shot the primary 5 Depeche Mode studio album covers, amongst which the debut one was launched in 1981. 

Griffin additionally created the album cowl for Echo & the Bunnymen’s Heaven Up Right here (additionally 1981), which was named one of the best album of that yr by NME, and among the finest albums of all time by Rolling Stone journal. He obtained the Royal Photographic Society Centenary Medal in 2013, and his works have additionally been celebrated in retrospective exhibitions at Reykjavík Artwork Museum, and London’s V&A and Nationwide Portrait Gallery.