Photographer Anton Corbijn has shot some of the most memorable album covers in the history of popular music, many resulting from lengthy collaborations with bands like U2 and Depeche Mode. He has 850 credits on Discogs. And now he has made a documentary about an even greater contribution to the visuals that package recorded music: the studio Hipgnosis, the lengthy discography of which includes Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, and Peter Gabriel’s first three solo albums, among many others.
The film also has the perfect title, Squaring the Circle. Perhaps he, or one of his many interviewees, will answer an underlying question: why has the square, one of the great skeuomorphisms of our time, persisted as the symbol for recorded music, long after 12” LPs, 7” singles, and CDs have been supplanted by cloud-based streaming?