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B16 said in Novembre 12th, 2010 at 17:06

After initially meeting through Patti Smith, photographer Frank Stefanko went on to take some of the most memorable Bruce Springsteen shots ever snapped, including the images on the cover of 1980’s The River and 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. The Darkness shot is from their first-ever session at Stefanko’s Haddonfield, New Jersey home, where the two New Jerseyans hit it off instantly.

Now, with the album ready for a deluxe reissue on November 16, we thought it would be a good time to revisit the cover with the lensman.

The two have remained friends for the last three decades, with Springsteen writing the introduction to Stefanko’s 2003 tome Days of Hope and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen. Read on for our Q&A with the photographer about how the Darkness on the Edge of Town cover came to be.

Pitchfork: How many times did you work with Bruce before you did the cover shoot?

FS: When we first started shooting in my home in Haddonfield, New Jersey, we just did some test shoots in locations around the house. And then we did quite a few weeks of shoots afterward, but it turned out the cover was from that very first test shoot.

Pitchfork: Did you talk to Bruce about the mood of the music on Darkness or what he was going for before the shoot?

FS: Absolutely not. I knew what his past music sounded like but I had no idea what intention he had for Darkness on the Edge of Town. I actually didn’t hear it until several weeks later. So the original shoot was just done with my perception of how I thought he wanted to look or how I wanted him to look.

Pitchfork: On the cover of his previous album, Born to Run, he’s grinning really intensely, but this one is a lot more serious.

FS: From what I understand, when he looked at the photograph he said, “That’s the person that I’m writing about. That’s the person that is the Darkness on the Edge of Town character and that’s what I want on my cover.” Apparently, my photographs helped him find the characters he was writing about in the songs.

Pitchfork: Was he in a good mood while shooting?

FS: Absolutely, especially when the E Street Band was in the house. Bruce kept everyone from getting bored by telling these wild stories. And I learned that Clarence Clemons was a great chess player. Some of the guys even set up a craps table on my dining room table between shots, just to pass the time.

Pitchfork: After shooting him in a bunch of different situations, would you ever have guessed that he would’ve picked that particular photo for the cover?

FS: Well, I kind of liked it, but there were so many images that I didn’t know what he was going to do. I didn’t know if he was going to pick any of them. I just shot my ass off. We worked all day and night. His stamina was incredible. He threw himself into the graphic aspect of the album. Whatever I asked him to do, he did. I’d give him a little direction and he gave me a lot back. For that I was grateful.

Pitchfork: I think part of the reason this cover stands out is because it looks like an amateur photo.

FS: We were trying to recreate these middle America, working class families; guys that were looking for redemption. It could have been done in the 70s or 50s or even the 40s. The idea was that these people transcended time or space. But we were trying to get something to look like an old Kodacolor snapshot. There were a lot of black and white photographs taken in those sessions too which were very striking in their own right. But the idea of this color photograph that could have been a snapshot in somebody’s drawer worked for the album.

Pitchfork: I assume you don’t live in that same house where you took the shot now.

FS: The house has been sold. When we listed it, the realty company wrote, “This was the Springsteen house” or “Springsteen stopped by here.”

We went back to that neighborhood a few years ago for the Darkness documentary The Promise, and we asked the owners if the wallpaper was still up and they said no. Somebody said that wallpaper on the cover is probably the most famous wallpaper in the world.

Pitchfork.com

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buzzandmusic said in Novembre 13th, 2010 at 13:11

BOSS FOREVER

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