Image: Modern Fine Art, New York
Modern Fine Art has listed a print of Eric Meola’s photograph ‘Born to Run, 1975’ on its website. The gallery works from New York and London, by appointment.
The sheet is described as an archival print, with an image measuring 20 by 30 inches on paper of 24 by 36 inches, or 60.96 by 91.44 centimetres. It is numbered 22 within an edition of 25.
One detail sets the object apart from the negative it comes from. The gallery states that this print was made and printed by Meola himself in September 2006 — roughly three decades after the picture was taken. What is listed is therefore a later print by the photographer, not a press or period print, though the listing does not say when, or whether, earlier prints of the image were made.
The photograph itself was taken for Bruce Springsteen’s album of the same name. It shows Springsteen resting against Clemons’s shoulder, and the frame was used on both the front and the back of the sleeve — an unusual arrangement, in that the two halves of the cover read as one continuous picture rather than as separate images.
Meola worked quickly and at volume. By the gallery’s account he exposed around 600 frames over about two hours against a white backdrop, which places the cover within a single concentrated session rather than a sequence of shoots. The account is the gallery’s own; no independent record of the session is cited.
Several things a photographic record would usually carry are absent. Neither the listing nor the gallery’s announcement gives a price, a provenance, or any exhibition or publication history for this particular print. Nor is it stated how many of the 25 remain unsold, and the co-subject is identified only by surname. On the gallery’s own account, the print is documented by its medium, its two measurements, its edition number and its 2006 printing date, and by nothing further.
