“Last Man Standing”: Bruce Springsteen by Eric Meola, 1977

“I made this image of Bruce Springsteen in 1977, at the sprawling old farmhouse on Telegraph Hill Road near Holmdel, New Jersey where he was writing and recording nearly a hundred songs after his 1975 breakout album Born to Run,” said Eric Meola. “As a photographer I always saw Bruce in black-and-white, but this image was one of the rare times I photographed him in color. It’s the stance, the body language in this photograph that compelled me to place him in front of the cruciform of the closed barn doors.”

“Shortly before I made this photograph I heard the lyrics ‘I’ll be on that hill ’cause I can’t stop, I’ll be on that hill with everything that I got.’ Staring directly into the camera, hand thrust into his jacket, legs pinned to the ground, I could feel his eyes pierce into me as if he had some place to go and he needed to walk that walk.”