Frank Stefanko

Frank Stefanko is a fine art photographer with connections to New Jersey performers Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen. Stefanko's early photographs, taken in the 1960s through the 1980s, reveal the emerging careers of the two young artists. Frank retains an on-going working relationship with both Springsteen and Smith. Stefanko will be releasing a book in November of 2017, entitled Bruce Springsteen: Further Up the Road that chronicles the 40-year working relationship between himself and Bruce Springsteen.

Stefanko was born in Philadelphia in 1946, and has been absorbed by photography since he was given an old box-camera when about seven years of age. Frank Senior (an accomplished carpenter) built a darkroom for his son in their row-home basement in Camden, NJ. Among youthful Stefanko's early "teachers" and inspirations were stark, black-and-white film noir movies, cinematographers such as James Wong Howe, Fritz Lang, and reality photographers such as Diane Arbus, who shot every-day people in natural settings. Stefanko received fine-art training at Glassboro College (now Rowan University) in Glassboro, New Jersey.

It was at Glassboro State College, in the mid-sixties, that Stefanko met and became friends with Patti Smith. He began photographing her even before Robert Mapplethorpe did. Those Patti Smith photographs led to an introduction to Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen saw the portraits and inquired about the photographer. Later, Springsteen called Stefanko to set up a date for some trial photos.

Stefanko was a resident of Haddonfield, New Jersey, for many years.

"Springsteen hadn't recorded anything in quite a while. The Darkness On The Edge Of Town album that we worked on back in 1978... was kind of like his re-emergence. He had been kind of out of the loop for a few years and was coming back", quotes Stefanko.{Days of Hope and Dreams} The two men spent several days shooting photos in and around Haddonfield and Camden, NJ, as well as in Stefanko's Haddonfield home. The album cover of Darkness, which features Springsteen lounging against pale-flowered, Cabbage Rose wall-paper, was taken in Stefanko's bedroom in 1978. The entire E-Street Band came down, and were photographed in the same environs. Springsteen's reaction to those sessions appears in the introduction to Stefanko's book Days of Hope and Dreams: "The pictures were raw....their directness, their toughness, were what I wanted for my music at that time."{Days of Hope and Dreams}

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