Anton Corbin knows cool. He can even create it, and has done so time and again in his pictures of musicians and rock stars — he is the photographer of whom Bono reportedly said, "I wish I were as cool as Anton’s photos make me look" (from your lips to God's ears, Bono). So who better than Corbijn to investigate the myth-making potential of photography and to bring us the story behind one of the most iconically cool photos of the 20th Century? But proving that sometimes we lose sight of the things that are closest to us, Corbijn's "Life," which details the relationship between Life Magazine photographer Dennis Stock and definingly cool movie star James Dean (which yielded the most famous photo of Dean, just months before his early death) is a weightless thing, skittering across the surface of the legend and only briefly ever daring to take a peek beneath. It looks pretty, and is visually often a creditable recreation of times past, but it gives no substance to Stock...
