Abelardo Morell travels the world and converts full-size
rooms (some spare, some ornately rococo) into immense camera obscura devices.
He brings the outside in through a tiny pin-hole, and by the alchemy of
optics, the outside is projected quite naturally upside down superimposing
and hugging the surfaces of everything in the room. Then, he photographs
the resulting “installation” with his 8 x 10 view camera and
enlarges the prints to mural size.
The effect is dizzying and delightful. And the photographs get better
and better as you study them and soak in the exquisite overlapping details.
Morell who teaches photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and
Princeton University, became famous for his black-and white camera obscura
images (as well as other black-and-white subject matter). However, he
just recently started to explore using color film, and in many ways, the
results are even more realistically rich and unnervingly set free from
the laws of gravity.
Writing about a one-man show that included Morell’s new work in
color, at Benrubi in NYC, the New Yorker quipped: “In the most spectacular
of the latter series, a wall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stripped
of everything but a de Chirico and some picture hooks, glows with the
projected image of the museum’s façade, all the more marvelous
for being flipped on its head.”
In this great audio interview
for Lens Culture, Morell talks about: his first camera obscura discoveries;
his own delight and surprise at working with color; why he shifted from
using a 35mm camera for ‘decisive moment' photography to the slowed-down
intentionality of working with an 8 x 10 view camera; and why he will
never again stay in the room during the required 8-hour exposures
– it was an hallucinatory nightmare!
— Jim Casper
InterviewOutside-in, upside-down
— and now in color!Cuban-born photographer Abelardo Morell had already taken the art world by storm with his black-and-white series of “rooms as camera obscura” imagery. But recently, he put color film in his 8 x 10 view camera, and the results are even more dizzying. In an exclusive audio interview,...View Images
Interview
Outside-in, upside-down
— and now in color!
— and now in color!
Cuban-born photographer Abelardo Morell had already taken the art world by storm with his black-and-white series of “rooms as camera obscura” imagery. But recently, he put color film in his 8 x 10 view camera, and the results are even more dizzying. In an exclusive audio interview,...
Outside-in, upside-down — and now in color!
Cuban-born photographer Abelardo Morell had already taken the art world by storm with his black-and-white series of “rooms as camera obscura” imagery. But recently, he put color film in his 8 x 10 view camera, and the results are even more dizzying. In an exclusive audio interview, you can hear Morell talk about the alchemy of optics, this new phase in his work, and more.
