Using little besides sheets of plastic and a camera, Havana-born photographer Abelardo Morell splashes beautiful architectural landscapes across the interiors that occupy them. It all started in 1991, in Morrell's living room, when he covered all the windows with black plastic, cut a tiny hole in the material, and voilà: the outside world blinked like a projector onto the walls. The shots of his aptly titled Camera Obscura series, which captures everything from Tuscan hillsides in country homes (above) to Manhattan skylines from Brooklyn apartments, have a strangely powerful ability to reconfigure one's sense of place—by sucking the larger built environment inside, the photos braid the public and scenic with the personal and intimate, creating a "weird and yet natural marriage of the inside and outside," Morell writes about the project. More photos, below.
Up until a few years ago, Morell kept the projected image untouched, meaning the landscapes were inverted—camera obscura, like human eyeballs, naturally reflects the scenes upside down—and a bit blurrier. Now, though, he uses a prism to flip the image and positions a lens over the hole in the window plastic to get a clearer picture.
· Abelardo Morell's Camera Obscura [official site via Flavorwire]
· All Photography posts [Curbed National]