In his 1978 novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino wrote, “The city…does not tell its past but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the street, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.” In Abelardo Morell‘s photography series, Camera Obscura (via Faith is Torment), every crevice of the interior space is infused with the city. The artist created his series by photographing outdoor cityscapes from Times Square to the Brooklyn Bridge and then projecting these images, with a small lens or prism, onto the walls of rooms. Morell has observed that an “increased sense of reality” lends itself to the photos, though perhaps it’s more the unreality of these images, and how the interior, when interposed with the exterior, begins to take on new meanings. We might regard these rooms as invisible cities in themselves, containing everything and nothing.
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell
Photo Credit: Abelardo Morell