Camera Melancholia is a double album of instrumental music inspired by and dedicated to Kerry McCarthy (1967-2021) who was Montgomery's partner for twenty years and the mother of two children they had together. She died from cancer in early 2021 after first being diagnosed in 2014. McCarthy was a professional curator in the area of pictorial collections, particularly around photographic material, and her PhD used the work of Roland Barthes to theorize about the legacies of images associated with Antarctic exploration in the early 20th Century. The cover art for Camera Melancholia was provided by Ronnie van Hout, an Aotearoa New Zealand artist associated with the earliest graphic design work for Flying Nun Records. Van Hout was also a very close and long standing friend of McCarthy. The gatefold album includes the text for ten poems written for and about McCarthy.
