In early June this year, Phoebe Bridgers announced her first solo tour since 2023. The flyer featured a photograph of the 31-year-old singer-songwriter on a desolate small-town street, behind the wheel of a vintage turquoise vehicle. It’s twilight, the sky a cosmic cotton-candy pattern of blue and pink, while a beam of light shoots out from behind an old house with white clapboard siding and hunter-green shutters. Bridgers is just a small figure in the frame, but her energy is unmistakable. You almost wonder if her signature skeleton suit is in the trunk of the car.
The image was taken by fine-art photographer Gregory Crewdson, whose eerie, stunning shots of suburban life have drawn comparisons to David Lynch and Edward Hopper. He doesn’t do a lot of editorial or commercial work, but he says he made an exception for the singer-songwriter with platinum-blond hair and a penchant for sadness. “I have to feel connected to the work,” Crewdson, 63, tells Rolling Stone on a Zoom call from his home in western Massachusetts. “There was an alliance there, with a sense of mystery and loneliness, and wanting to make connections about landscape and all that. It’s a coming together between Phoebe’s world and my world.”
Crewdson says he and Bridgers spoke about a possible collaboration a few years ago, then met up last summer in Hudson, New York, to plan. They shot this image over two days this March in nearby Adams, Massachusetts. (“I didn’t want any leaves on the trees, to feel like winter going into spring,” he says.) Crewdson’s shoots are similar to film sets, with roughly 50 crew members. Five cranes were brought in for lighting and equipment, and the fire department sprayed down the street to give it a mystical glow. He says the production value is meant to heighten what’s already there. “There’s that perfect coming together of our artificial lights and the ambient light of the sun,” he says. “It’s like the one time when it all comes together.”
Bridgers, Crewdson, and the crew waited for the moment when the light was just right.
HARPER GLANTZ/COURTESY GREGORY CREWDSON STUDIO
There’s also an analog element to the photo. Crewdson points out a phone booth in the background, fitting for Bridgers’ upcoming smartphone-free tour, and the xenon lamp emitting that beam of light. “That’s an old-school light no one uses anymore,” he says. “It would be so easy to do that with AI or digital effects, but we made that.”
Fans are bound to visit the street in Adams where the magic took place, and Crewdson says he’s already seen tattoos of the image. He adds that like many of us, he was a huge admirer of Bridgers’ last solo LP, 2020’s Punisher. “There’s something about that album that really captured my imagination, that felt particularly haunted and dreamlike,” he says. “And, of course, there’s this sadness that runs through all the songs. I very much related to that, because those are themes I deal with in my work. This sense of loneliness, but wanting to make a connection.”
The beam of light in the image came from an old-school xenon lamp.
HARPER GLANTZ/COURTESY GREGORY CREWDSON STUDIO
