Melige Maandag

Or "Mellow Monday". My radio station celebrates Valentine's Day in it's own quirky way. We get the best, the strangest, the most obscure and the mellowest love songs all day long. Even a long time Valentine's Day hater like me feels her heart melt.

a. somebody

It's what I always wanted to be: a somebody. Maybe that's why I like the work of Anton Corbijn so much. The shy Dutch boy hid himself behind the camera to come closer to the somebodies he adored, to become a somebody himself. In his latest photo series Corbijn becomes his heroes -- a. somebody. He went back to his home town, dressed up as a dead musician and made the picture he was never able to make. Corbijn takes the constant play between what's real and what not in a photograph just one step further. Nothing is real anymore. In his blue series we got the celebrities doing celebrity stuff, looking like they were surprised by a paparazzi photographer. Although they were completely orchestrated we could still believe they were "real". a. somebody isn't real, and you immediately see it: Elvis between containers, Freddy Mercury in front of a Dutch hairdresser, the word "kapsalon" visible beside him. They are an ode of a 50 year old man to the heroes that made him want be a somebody.

In the Fotomuseum in Antwerp you can see a small selection of Corbijn's work: his brown work, blue work, a. somebody, and Kraftwerk. One wall is covered with pictures of famous people. P. and I sat in front of it and tried to guess who was who. We got more than half of them right. But not all. Even though they were well known I had never seen their face (William Gibson) or they hid their face for Corbijn's camera (Lenny Kravitz). This brown series is generally considered as a view behind the mask of the celebrity, but sitting there and watching all the faces parade in front of me, I knew it isn't so. Corbijn simply makes very good pictures of remarkable people who will always strike a pose. That's all I want from the people I look up at. I want them to do what they're best at: look visciously in the camera, wave their fists at me and smile their wicked smile.