Tis the season for #bobdylancore

During the frigid New York winter of 1963, photographer Don Hunstein ventured to the Village, specifically to the third floor of 161 West 4Th Street, to capture snapshots of a young artist who had arrived just two years earlier from Minnesota and was emerging as the new voice of American folk: Bob Dylan. As Hunstein recounted to the New York Times, after taking some photos inside the apartment with his companion Suze Rotolo, he wasn't satisfied, so he decided to take them to the street. "It was freezing outside," recalls Suze Rotolo in her biography A Freewheelin' Time. "In some shots, it's obvious that we were freezing; certainly, Bob was, with that light jacket. But the image was everything." What Hunstein conveyed with those shots on Jones Street, with the two walking closely, his hands deeply buried in his pockets and shoulders hunched as if to shield themselves from the cold, marked the beginning of a historic period that would forever change the culture and aesthetics of early 60s America. Over the years, numerous fans have visited Jones Street to replicate the pose, and directors like Cameron Crowe have asked their actors to emulate the movements, as seen in Vanilla Sky. It was unthinkable that in 2023, this photo would become so viral, inspiring movements and aesthetics, becoming a TikTok trend, #bobdylancore, where teenagers walk the streets, hunched in thin jackets, looking thoughtfully down, with Don't Think Twice, It's All Right playing in the background, currently boasting 11.7 million views.

In the composition of that specific photo, all the ideals that would soon lead the vast majority of the population to advocate for their ideas and rights, elevating Dylan as their Prophet, were encapsulated. It was more than a beautiful photo: "Perhaps no one would have ever understood what those songs were about if there hadn't been the cover," Rotolo said. The cover showing them huddled together while walking in the cold of New York reflected the ideas inherent in Dylan's lyrics and sound – an urgent movement towards peace and love, away from war and conflict. The meaning of the album and songs becomes clearer, and the image enhances Dylan's message, giving the listener a visual perception of the writer at peace with himself. As illustrated in the report by Rolling Stone US journalist Angie Martoccio, it can be said that the Bob Dylan Core had its genesis starting from January 2023, thanks to the first video, subsequently gone viral, created by Andrew Clark, Programmatic Advertising Manager for OMD USA. He recounted how, simply being filmed by his girlfriend while walking in Brooklyn with a light winter jacket, he thought of associating his image with that of Bob Dylan in The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan's artwork. "You know how people recreate a dance on TikTok? It’s put your hands in your pocket, someone films you walking, and they can either have you walk towards the camera or do a bit of a tracking shot. That’s part of why it was so replicated."

The trend has now extended well beyond the use of the singer-songwriter's famous suede leather jacket, to the extent that on November eleventh, a Bob Dylan Core-themed party was held at Emerson College in Boston. "I had someone in my comment section ask me where he could get a Bob Dylan style jacket, which I thought was just hilarious ’cause there’s just no such thing," says 25-year-old Aidan Hull to Rolling Stone. "A jacket that's not warm enough is a Bob Dylan style jacket." But can this be reduced solely to a purely aesthetic analysis?

As explained by Andrew Clark on Linkedin, his goal was to try to bring together some iconic and aesthetic elements of Bob Dylan's figure, showing them with a language that would be understandable even for Gen Z. Making the singer-songwriter go viral and especially known for future generations. The virality of an element or artistic situation deeply reflects the needs of society, and it's not at all coincidental that an artist who has shaped his image over the years through a strongly identity-driven poetics and a unique style comes to the aid of a generation that sees its goals today as a mirage. The precariousness of work and society, the increasingly constant emergence of multiple conflicts, bring the Generation Z closer and closer to what Bob Dylan recited in his songs, and it's not coincidental that listening to songs like It's All Right, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) can make one feel perfectly connected with him: "Advertising signs that con you/Into thinking you're the one/That can do what's never been done/That can win/ what's never been won/Meantime life outside goes on/All around you."

Over time, his aesthetic vision, skillfully shown in a beautiful article by GQ dedicated to him for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, and represented in documentaries by Martin Scorsese, No Direction Home and Rolling Thunder Revue, and in the film I'm Not There by Todd Haynes, has increasingly merged with contemporaneity, allowing the current generation to discover him even through memes, as in the case of Bob Dylan Core. In the coming months, the filming of A Complete Unknown will begin, featuring Timothee Chalamet, a generational star, portraying Mr. Tambourine in the crucial and traumatic transition that led him to abandon the attire of the folk minstrel for a more electric and provocative sound. Who knows if, upon its release, Bob Dylan will have rightfully entered the playlist of Gen Z.