PHOTO ESSAY

Buck Shot

The portrait photography of Chris Buck

By Matthew McKinnon

March 21, 2006

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Anton Corbijn, 1987.

In 1987, Buck and fellow Nerve contributor Rick McGinnis visited a Toronto hotel to interview their long-distance idol: Anton Corbijn, a Dutch photographer who had a reputation for making portraits of rock stars that were unlike (read: better than) anyone else’s. Buck brought his portfolio along hoping for constructive criticism. Corbijn said almost nothing as he flipped through it. Afterwards he let Buck and McGinnis take his picture.

“When we started shooting him, he was sitting by a dining table by the window. Then he said, ‘Let’s move over to the bed, because the light’s really nice there.’ Both Rick and I looked over and we thought, ‘Doesn’t look so hot to us.’ But we moved over there with him, of course, because he was the master,” Buck says.

“When we got the film back, both Rick and I noticed something remarkable, which was that our pictures kind of looked like Anton Corbijn’s pictures. Perhaps as a little gift or perhaps unwittingly, he showed us part of how he shoots.... He put himself in very flat light, so once you print [the film] and you add a little contrast, you get this charcoal-drawing feeling, where there are no real shadows. It’s very figurative, very clean.”