Photograph

Photograph is the eighth track on The Astrud Gilberto Album, a 2:12 reading of Antônio Carlos Jobim's "Fotografia". The album was recorded at RCA Studios in Hollywood on January 27 and 28, 1965, with Creed Taylor producing and Marty Paich arranging.

Jobim wrote the song in 1959, music and Portuguese words both, and it was one of the first songs for which he supplied his own lyric. Ruy Castro's account is that his usual lyricist, Vinicius de Moraes, was posted to Montevideo for much of 1958 and 1959. Flora Purim has described the song as being about a forbidden love affair. Sylvia Telles made the first recording in 1959, for her album Amor de Gente Moça (Músicas de Antonio Carlos Jobim).

The English version

The English lyric is Ray Gilbert's and was published in 1965. A photograph in the Jobim archive shows Jobim with Gilbert at the session for this album, with Gilbert's English versions, Fotografia among them, listed alongside. The album's Wikipedia tracklist credits the song to Jobim alone, while Deezer, according to a search summary that was not opened directly, lists Jobim and Gilbert, which is the likelier credit for the English words.

The players on the album were Gilberto on vocals, Jobim on guitar, Joe Mondragon on bass, Bud Shank on alto saxophone and flute, João Donato on piano, Stu Williamson on trumpet, Milt Bernhart on trombone, and the Guildhall String Ensemble. Which of them are on this track is not documented in the sources we found.

Afterlife

Gary Giddins called the song ingenious in The New Yorker and Mark Holston called it mesmerizing in Jazziz, as quoted on the song's Wikipedia page. Jobim himself recorded it with English words on A Certain Mr. Jobim in 1967. The audio we hold comes from the auto-generated Astrud Gilberto - Topic channel and is the studio recording; the channel does not say whether it is the 1965 mix or a later remaster.