See Patti Smith in All Her ’60s and ’70s Era Glory in Rare Photographs by Her College Friend

Salvador Dalí may have once told her she resembled a crow, but to this day, Patti Smith is much more widely regarded as a style icon. She’s been magnet for photographers almost immediately since she first left her hometown of New Jersey in the ’60s to hang around CBGB’s and pose for Robert Mapplethorpe. The latter wasn’t the only photographer Smith ended up having a close encounter with: When she was in college, Smith also became a muse for Frank Stefanko after she caught his eye in a co-op in South Jersey by “mosey[ing] in like the bad guy walking into a saloon in an old Western movie,” as he recalls of his first encounter with the singer in Patti Smith: American Artist, a collection of his portraits of Smith from the mid-’60s to the late ’70s, out by Insight Editions this week. Those 15 or so years were, of course, a busy time for Smith, meaning Stefanko, who’s also photographed legends like the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, followed her from stint at the Chelsea Hotel to the build-up around her landmark album Horses—with plenty of guitar-playing and cigarette-smoking along the way. Take a look back, here.