Not everyone considers the 1982 Depeche Mode album “A Broken Frame,” with which Martin Gore debuted as the sole songwriter after Vince Clarke left, to be a masterpiece. In rankings of the entire work, it even ranks lower, despite single releases like “Leave in Silence”. However, the photographer Brian Griffin received great recognition for his cover motif, which certainly does not look like a “broken frame”.
It is a photograph and the cover image is intended to resemble a painting: a woman cutting grain in a field in East Anglia, near Duxford, Cambridgeshire.
The photo of Brian Griffin – who had already taken the cover photo for Depeche Mode’s debut album “Speak & Spell” in 1981 as well as press photos for the band – was taken with a combination of natural and artificial light. Griffin cited the socialist realism of Soviet Russia as inspirations, especially the works of Kazimir Malevich, but also German Romanticism. Depeche Mode played a lot with socialist motifs until “Some Great Reward” from 1984.
Now there are some rumors circulating on social media again – they keep happening – that the lady in Griffin’s photo could be Kate Bush. Just in the rear view. The rumors are reinforced by the fact that the then 35-year-old singer can be seen elsewhere in very similar-looking pictures, from the front. In fact, the British eccentric is not depicted on “A Broken Frame” – but there is a connection.
“Kate Bush had seen my cover of ‘A Broken Frame’ for Depeche Mode and wanted something similar,” said Brian Griffin, who released the Bush motifs a year after the DM record, in April 1983. Another can also be seen in Bush’s “This woman’s work: Anthology 1978-1990” booklet.
Griffin himself has a gallery of alternate images from the same photoshoot on display on his website. Later releases of the album on vinyl (2007) and CD (2009) show slightly different recordings of the motif. And it was also featured on the cover of Life magazine’s 1990 issue of “World’s Best Photographs 1980-1990.”
Kate Bush herself has not commented on the motives for her shooting. However, the “Wuthering Heights” singer doesn’t look like a worker in the photo – more like a dreamy woman in harmony with spring nature.