Nola's Morrison Snaps Color Art for U2 Album
Tuesday, 15 December 2009 | Levent OZLER



When U2 fans open the deluxe edition of No Line on the Horizon, the band's latest CD, they will find a book containing a beautiful color photo gallery that documents the legendary rockers throughout the album production process. Nola's Kenny Morrison - working closely with Nola EP Charlie Curran and the book's designer, long-time U2 Creative Director Catherine Owens - snapped these beautiful shots in Ireland and France. In an acknowledgement of Morrison's high standing in the art world, his work sits in the book alongside some giants in the field: he shares photo credits with internationally renowned black-and-white photographer Anton Corbijn, and a Hiroshi Sugimoto photograph graces the front cover.

"What an opportunity," exclaimed Morrison. "Watching the album-making process from a fly-on-the-wall perspective was truly a revelation. And the band couldn't have been more courteous and professional - an absolute joy to work with. Anton's black-and-white photos were breathtaking, and it is an honor to be associated with the great Hiroshi Sugimoto in any way."



Morrison's gallery - which sits alongside U2 interviews that Owens conducted - features an impressive mix of performers and instruments, close-ups and panoramas, individual portraits and photo montages, with scribbled song sheets scattered throughout. Some are presented in perfect sharp focus; others are treated with a grainy look or are slightly blurred - all are beautiful, and the collected works poignantly capture the chaos, the focus, the intensity, and the joy of artists fixated upon the final shared goal of cutting an album.

The photos are only part of the work Morrison has done in an evolving relationship with Owens and U2. He filmed Bono with Bishop Desmond Tutu in London last summer and Tutu's speech and visage were incorporated into their 360 Tour visuals.

"This was a great opportunity to show off Kenny's incredible range," Curran notes. "When one of the most successful acts in modern music respects your work enough to come back for more, you know you're doing something right. With great artists like Kenny up and down our roster, you can expect more high-profile work like this from Nola in the very near future."

dexigner