Kissing Booth: Tove Lo’s 2023 Tour Through Its Kisses

How did the idea for the book come about? And how did you decide it should be a physical book?

When we set out to shoot this book it was 2022 and Tove's first tour since the full lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic. I was thinking about this story I had heard on Radiolab about the Austrian painter Egon Schiele and how his early death at age 28 due to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic might have had a profound effect on the art world. Schiele, who's known for his grotesque portrayals of the human body, was just breaking and making his mark. He was pushing this trend toward figurative work, but after the flu and his death, the art world made a total shift toward abstraction. Bodies had become scary. If Schiele would've lived, there's a chance he would've kept figures at the center of art culture. Instead he kind of disappeared and his work didn't become ‘in vogue’ again until relatively recently. 

From 2020-2022 nothing was scarier than somebody else's mouth. In 2022, nothing was more thrilling than getting to be around each other again. It was a fun and exciting idea to explore this juxtaposition and do what Schiele wasn't able to by keeping the scary in focus.

You often work with musicians, how did this begin, and what draws you to this realm?

Music has always been a big part of my life. I played in bands when I was younger and it was really my first artistic release. Then I worked for a non-profit for over eight years, making documentaries and working with musicians and artists to help spread our story. When it was time to move on, it was very natural for me to work in the music world because it's where I had so many friends and a wide community.

All the photographs in the book were taken in the crowds of Tove Lo’s Dirt Femme tour; the book is as much an innovative way to document a tour as it is a book on kissing. What did you learn about crowds through taking these photographs? 

Tove's fans are the absolute best. Through her music Tove creates an environment that's equal parts fun, dancey, party-animal-club vibes and also safe, emotional, warm-fuzzy-feelings vibes. So the people that attend her shows tend to be very open, fun and emotional. They're often there being the freest version of themselves and I felt so lucky that I got to freeze some of that in time.

Kissing tends to actually be very rare in erotic imagery, and looking at the photographs, they often read as more celebratory or joyful rather than strictly erotic or sensual. What is your impression of them, now looking back? 

Yes I totally agree with this and it's a great observation. This is an interesting project because we weren't voyeuristically catching people in the act of kissing, but rather people were coming up to me and volunteering to be a part of this project. And they're doing so at a time when their emotions were high because they had just felt the freedom of dancing and singing their hearts out to one of their favorite musicians. That joy and freedom really comes through in the photos and why we get lovers kissing lovers, friends kissing friends, family members kissing and the whole gamut.

How was it to document an act that can be so intimate? Almost more so than sex itself in some ways. 

Documenting it all was incredibly sweet but also a bit frantic just given the nature of the project. I still had my normal tour photographer/videographer duties to keep up with so I didn't have a lot of time to sit with each couple/photo. It was very spontaneous.

How did you decide which photographs to leave out, and which to keep? What was the curation process like for the book?

I'm happy to say that everyone who took a photo and wanted to be in the book, ended up in the book. I was very adamant that if a couple participated and took a photo with me, then we would honor that by including them in the final book. I was shooting on film so every couple only got one photo (with a few exceptions). I was really hoping that there wouldn't be any errors or processing issues with the film, because then that couple's chance of being in the book would be gone. But lucky us, every photo that was taken came out.

What are you working on next?

I just wrapped up being the on-set photographer for the show "HACKS" and will start shooting on "I LOVE LA: Season 2" soon. I'm very excited.