Camera Obscura Image of Houses Across the Street in Our Bedroom, Quincy, MA

Abelardo Morell’s camera obscura pictures, which pay homage to the prehistory of photography, are created by turning individual rooms into imaging chambers. (In Latin, camera obscura means dark chamber.) In this process, which has been known for centuries, a small hole acts as a crude lens, casting a faint, inverted image on the wall of a darkened space. Inside this room-size projection, Morell places his own camera, which he uses to record the entire scene in exposures ranging up to eight hours in length. These remarkable pictures remind us of both the technical simplicity and the mystery of the image-making process.