The Joshua Tree

Anton Corbijn spotted a lone Joshua tree off Route 190 near Darwin, California during a December 1986 photo shoot with U2. The band spent just 20 minutes photographing with the solitary plant in freezing desert conditions before the cold drove them back to their bus.

The album's front cover wasn't shot at that location. Corbijn and designer Steve Averill chose a photograph taken at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley for the main cover, showing the band positioned on the left side against a dramatic lunar-like landscape. The Joshua tree images appeared on the back cover and inside the gatefold.

For the gatefold sleeve, Corbijn used a rented panoramic Horizon camera despite having no prior experience with the equipment. The camera's fixed focus at infinity left the band slightly out of focus while the distant mountains remained sharp. A mirror the band had used to check their appearance and Corbijn's camera case remained visible in the frame.

The cover concept originated from U2's desire to capture "cinematic America" for an album with working titles "The Desert Songs" and "The Two Americas." Averill designed the cover with black letterbox bars above and below the image to evoke widescreen cinema, citing directors John Ford and Sergio Leone as inspiration.

Corbijn shot in black and white at a time when color dominated album art, which immediately signaled a seriousness of intent. The band appears small against an overwhelming landscape — figures dwarfed by rock formations and open sky — invoking the visual grammar of the American western directly, which is exactly what the Ford and Leone references were reaching for. The letterbox bars complete that cinematic argument: a band explicitly casting themselves into a mythology larger than rock and roll.

Different photographs were used across formats. The vinyl LP featured the classic Zabriskie Point shot, while the cassette used an alternate angle where the hills appeared above the band's heads. The original CD release featured a blurry, distorted photo of the band entirely.

Rolling Stone ranked The Joshua Tree at number 97 on its "100 Greatest Album Covers of All Time" in 1991. The actual Joshua tree photographed for the album fell around 2000, though the site remains a pilgrimage destination for fans, marked by a plaque at the location.