Description

In February 1963, a few weeks after Suze Rotolo came back from Italy, CBS staff photographer Don Hunstein followed her and Bob Dylan into Jones Street in Manhattan's West Village, about fifty feet from West 4th Street and close to the cold apartment they shared. The couple walked down the middle of the slushy road, Rotolo holding Dylan's arm, and Hunstein caught what looks like a private moment on an ordinary winter afternoon.

Rotolo remembered the day without romance. Dylan, she said, "wore a very thin jacket, because image was all." She was bundled up: "Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters." She added, "Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat." In her memoir she recognised the photograph as "one of those cultural markers that influenced the look of album covers," because it looked unposed at a time when most sleeves were staged.

That casual look became a template. Janet Maslin wrote that it "inspired countless young men to hunch their shoulders, look distant, and let the girl do the clinging." Films recreated it, from Vanilla Sky and I'm Not There to A Complete Unknown, and in 2023 a TikTok trend under the name Bob Dylan Core restaged the walk millions of times. The album was released by Columbia on 27 May 1963.

Credit

Photography by Don Hunstein