This Is A Photograph

Not long ago, I imagined a photobook in which there are only words describing photographs. For example, a page might read, This is a photograph of Memphis, Tennessee, but with no actual photo of Memphis, rather just those seven words, leaving your imagination to do what it will, and to gather what it does, or doesnt, know about such a place and assign an image or images to the words in front of you.

Perhaps you, seeing those seven words, are envisioning something right now—an image or a series of images. Maybe it is a montage of Elvis Presely, Martin Luther King, Jr., or the Mississippi River. Or maybe that’s just me: Elvis going to war, young and handsome in his uniform; MLK leading the sanitation strike only weeks before his assisination; or the Mississippi River, full of mud and oblivious to all of this, flowing as a river does. 

And then you might flip to the next page and find the words, This Is A Photograph Of Your Mother In A Skirt. And you, reading these words, might envision your own mother, whomever she may be, somewhere back in her past, wearing a skirt. Perhaps the skirt is surprisingly shorter than you’d expect your mother to ever wear, or—maybe more likely—it’s conservative, like her, and down to her ankles. Or maybe it's just somewhere in between, falling just below the knees, a sign of the times she lived through. I know what I see when I read those words, and now I wonder what you see, too. 

As the idea took hold of me, I imagined this photo book without photographs, all those short bursts of text, allowing the reader to be the photographer. It would be a photobook of the imagination—something between poetry and photography. It became an exercise for me, and I responded to it with drawings, poems, and essays. Ultimately, being a songwriter, I decided to put these poems and photographs, real or imagined, to music. Now, two years later, that process has resulted in my new album This Is A Photograph. 

Here on Substack, I want to draw out some of the connective tissue between the photobook concept and the final product of my engagement with it. I want to give you a peek behind the curtain on how my album was conceived, captured, and released—I’ll share demos and stories about the writing and recording of the songs along with the drawings, photos, poems, and essays that inspired them. As we release the album and begin touring, I’ll share stories of life on the road from all over the world. I think this will be something between old-fashioned liner notes, a tour diary, and some kind of dialogue. I really am curious what you see when you look at this photobook in your imagination, and I want to hear it in the comments. All posts that do not include demos or never before heard music will be free whereas demos and any new material will live behind a pay wall. Subscribe below.