Published by Schirmer Mosel in 2011, Anton Corbijn’s Inwards and Outwards gathers thirty-five black-and-white portraits made over the preceding decade. The sitters are primarily visual artists whom Corbijn regarded as important sources of inspiration. Rather than surveying the musicians and performers with whom his name is often associated, the book turns toward the artistic community that informed his own way of seeing.

This premise makes portraiture a form of exchange. Corbijn remains the author of each image, yet the series is also shaped by one artist looking closely at another. The title suggests the double movement involved: attention directed outward toward a sitter’s public presence, and inward toward the affinities and influences that connect photographer and subject. The photographs can therefore be read not simply as records of notable individuals, but as an oblique account of Corbijn’s creative coordinates during this period.

The portraits were connected with a 2010 exhibition of figures from music, art, and fashion; the book gives that body of work a concentrated editorial form. Across 112 pages, thirty-five photographs establish a measured scale, allowing the portraits to operate both individually and as a group. Francis Hodgson is credited as a contributor, adding another editorial voice to a publication otherwise defined by Corbijn’s sustained attention to faces and artistic identities.

For collectors, the value of Inwards and Outwards lies in this precise position within Corbijn’s practice. It is a focused study of influence, kinship, and self-definition conducted through black-and-white portraiture, as well as a publication tied to a specific exhibition moment. The hardcover, approximately square format further distinguishes it as a self-contained book object: not a broad career retrospective, but a concise record of the people and disciplines against which Corbijn considered his own work.