Gregory Crewdson Shot the Eerie Artwork for Singer Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Smartphone-Free’ Tour

Photographer Gregory Crewdson shot the haunting artwork for singer Phoebe Bridgers’ upcoming tour, where smartphones will be banned.

In his three-and-a-half decades long career, American photographer Crewdson has become celebrated for his large-scale and cinematic images of suburbia.

Crewdson does not typically do editorial or commercial work, but according to a report by Rolling Stone, he recently made an exception for Grammy Award-winning singer Phoebe Bridgers, creating eerie promotional artwork for her upcoming ‘The Lost Tour 2026.’ The nearly two-dozen-date U.S. run will be Bridgers’ first solo tour since 2023 and will be entirely smartphone-free.

The flyer poster for the tour features Crewdson’s photograph of Bridgers sitting in a vintage turquoise car on a quiet small-town street. Taken at twilight, the image shows a blue and pink sky above an old house with white siding and green shutters, illuminated by a beam of light in the background. Although Bridgers appears small in the frame, the image still conveys a strong sense of her presence. Crewdson says he has already seen fans getting tattoos of the photograph that he took of Bridgers’ tour.

Crewdson tells Rolling Stone that he greatly admired Phoebe Bridgers’ 2020 album Punisher, adding that he relates to its themes of sadness, loneliness, and the desire for connection, which are also present in his own work.

“I have to feel connected to the work,” Crewdson says. “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 discussed working together a few years ago and later met in Hudson, New York to plan the project. The image was then shot over two days in March in Adams, Massachusetts. Crewdson is known to work with large production teams to scout and shoot his photographs — in a way that is not indifferent to the process of making a feature-length motion picture. He notes that the production involved five cranes for lighting and equipment, and that the fire department sprayed the street with water to create a dreamlike glow.

“There’s that perfect coming together of our artificial lights and the ambient light of the sun,” he tells the music news outlet. “It’s like the one time when it all comes together.”

There are also references to older, non-digital technology in the image. Gregory Crewdson highlights an analog phone booth in the background, as well as a xenon lamp that produces a visible 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.”