Camera Obscura

by Abelardo Morell, Lucy Sante

Abelardo Morell, author of the award-winning A Book of Books, makes magical camera obsucra images in darkened interiors. The deceptively simple process - he blacks out all the windows, leaving just a pinhole opening in one of them - produces photographs of astonishing, complex beauty. Because of the nature of refracted light, the world outside is projected upside down into the nearly blackened room, in essence converting the space into the interior of a camera. Morell then photographs the results with a large-format view camera, often requiring exposures of eight hours or more.
Locations around the world were chosen for the interesting details and juxtapositions they would elicit - the Empire State Building lies across a bedspread in a midtown Manhattan interior; the Tower of London is imprinted on the walls of a room in the Tower Hotel; the countryside in rural Cuba, Morell's birthplace, plays across the walls of a crumbling chamber that is rich with the patina of its own history. Every image is full of surprises and revelations.

Genres: Photography, Criticism, Art

112 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2004

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection the photographer projects light through a small hole in a window of an otherwise totally dark room. The effect is that the outside landscape is projected, upside-down and horizontally, onto the room's interior. There are many beautiful shots of Boston, NYC, and the author's native Cuba. Worth having a look-see.