Whilst best known for his literary works, the 19th-century French author Emile Zola was also obsessed with photography. Eight years before his death, using ten cameras, he took thousands of photographs including portraits, selfies and scenes of Paris. He has been frequently quoted as saying “In my view, you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it”. In her autobiography ‘Hold Still’, Sally Mann, one of America’s most renowned photographers, referred to the quote in the prologue to her book, adding:
“What Zola perhaps also knew or intuited was that once photographed, whatever you had “really seen” would never be seen by the eye of memory again. It would forever be cut from the continuum of being, a mere sliver, a slight, translucent paring from the fat life of time; elegiac, one-dimensional, immediately assuming the amber quality of nostalgia: an instantaneous memento mori.”
That comment from Mann came racing back to me when I read about Kevin Morby’s new album and the feelings a box of photos left in him…
The idea for Kevin Morby’s new album This Is A Photograph began back in January 2020 when he was absentmindedly flipping through a box of old family photos in the basement of his childhood home in Kansas City. Just hours before, at a family dinner, his father had collapsed in front of him and had to be rushed to the hospital. That night Morby still felt the shock and fear lodged in his bones. So he gazed at the images until one of the pictures jumped out at him: his father as a young man, proud and strong and filled with confidence, posing on a lawn with his shirt off. “In the photo he looks young and full of confidence, puffing his chest out at the camera as if he were looking for a fight,” explains Morby. “It was not lost on me that this was the same chest, just hours before, I had seen the ambulance put a stethoscope against as he lay on the kitchen floor of my sister’s house.” While his father regained his strength, Morby meditated on these ideas. And then, he headed to Memphis. He moved into the Peabody Hotel and spent his days paying tribute and genuflecting to the dreamers he admired; he’d head down to the banks of the Mississippi River, to the spot where Jeff Buckley met his end. He’d wander around the neighbourhood where Jay Reatard spent his last day then drive by the Stax marquee for a brief lift in his spirits. Then cruise out past Graceland, before traversing Highway 61, letting the ghosts call to him and shape his own dreams. In the evening, he would return to his room and document his ideas on a makeshift recording set-up, with just his guitar and a microphone. The songs, elegiac in nature, befitting all he had seen, poured out of him.
Throughout the accompanying video for This is a Photograph, alongside Morby family photos are others. The press states they are from the Peter J. Cohen collection. While Cohen is not a photographer, his fascination with photos is no less fascinating them Emile Zola’s. He’s a collector of snapshots and vernacular photographs and has amassed 60,000 photographs organized into 130 categories. These once discarded images or “anonymous” photographs are rescued by Cohen and “they become societal artifacts that collectively trace a history of private image making.” Find out more here.
Morby’s accompanying video to This is a Photograph was directed by Chantal Anderson and filmed in a remote California town. Musically it builds and grows in energy reaching a climatic fever pitch that’s underpinned by a Stax vintage sound that just locks in perfectly to the whole analogue vintage feel of the whole thing.
The last album sessions were held live in Memphis at Sam Philip’s Recording Co., helmed by his son Jerry Philips, which carries on with the legacy of the original Sun Records studio:
They worked on the song “This Is A Photograph” that last day, with recent Stax Academy of Music alumni singing the backing harmonies. Morby says “Sam Cohen and I wanted to throw everything at the wall with this one. It’s about the battle every family faces, that of chasing the clock, to live our lives and hold onto one another for as long as possible. That, and, the dreams that come with being a young family in America and where those dreams eventually end up.”
“This Is A Photograph” is out 13th May via Dead Oceans and is supported by a world tour (see below).
Pre-Order the album: https://kevinmorby.deadoc.co/this-is-a-photograph
Kevin Morby UK/EU tour dates:
Fri. May 20 – Madrid, ES @ Tomavistas
Sat. May 21 – Biarritz, FR @ L’Atabal
Sun. May 22 – Montpellier, FR @ Le Rockstore
Mon. May 23 – Bordeaux, FR @ Rock School Barbey
Tue. May 24 – Paris, FR @ Le Bataclan
Wed. May 25 – Köln, DE @ Kulturekirche
Thu. May 26 – Antwerpen, BE @ De Roma
Sat. May 28 – London, UK @ Wide Awake at Brockwell Park
Sun. May 29 – Utrecht, NL @ TivoliVredenburg
Mon. May 30 – Hamburg, DE @ Uebel & Gefährlich
Tue. May 31 – Berlin, DE @ Metropol
Wed. Jun. 1 – Schorndorf, DE @ Manufaktur
Fri. Jun. 3- Angers, FR @ Levitation
Sat. Jun. 4 – Clermont-Ferrand, FR @ La Cooperative de Mai
Mon. Jun. 5 – Lille, FR @ Aéronef
Sun. Jul. 3 – Bologna, IT @ Covo Summer
Mon. Jul. 4 – Terni, IT @ Anfifteatro Romano
Wed. Jul. 6 – Zagreb, HR @ Mochvara
Thu. Jul. 7 – Budapest, HU @ Akvárium Klub
Fri. Jul. 8 – Trencin, Slovakia @ Pohoda Festival
Sat. Jul. 9 – Zittau, DE @ Lonesome Lake Festival
Mon. Jul. 11 – Vienna, AT @ WUK
Tue. Jul. 12 – Munich, DE @ Ampere
Wed. Jul. 13 – Bern, CH @ Gurtenfestival
Fri. Jul. 15 – Lisbon, PT @ Super Bock Super Rock
Sun. Aug. 21 – Erlanger, DE @ Ewerk
Mon. Aug. 22 – Hannover, DE @ Café Glocksee
Wed. Aug. 24 – Copenhagen, DK @ Punpehuset
Sat. Aug. 27 – Prague, CZ @ Meetfactory
Mon. Aug. 28 – Darmstadt, DE @ Golden Leaves Festival
Wed. Aug. 31 – Brighton, UK @ Chalk
Sat. Sept. 3 – Dorset, UK @ End of the Road Festival
Sun. Sept. 4 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall
Mon. Sept. 5 – Glasgow, UK @ Classic Grand
Tue. Sept. 6 – Leeds, UK @ The Brudenell Social Club
Wed. Sept. 7 – Dublin, IE @ Academy