Camera Obscura
by: Abelardo Morell, Luc Sante (Author)

Hardcover. NY, Bulfinch Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 112 pages. Abelardo Morell 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. Clean copy.