Brian Griffin

Brian Griffin (1948–2024) was a British photographer whose staged, psychologically charged portraits transformed both corporate imagery and the visual culture of post-punk and electronic music. Born in Birmingham and trained at Manchester Polytechnic after working in engineering, Griffin first became known for surreal photographs of businessmen commissioned by Management Today.

That experience fed directly into his later music work: he recognised in the sharply dressed post-punk generation some of the same visual codes he had encountered in offices and boardrooms, then pushed them into more theatrical and symbolic settings. Griffin photographed artists including Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, Kate Bush and Queen and created defining album imagery for Depeche Mode and Echo & the Bunnymen; his 1982 A Broken Frame cover for Depeche Mode became one of his best-known images.