Wednesday Work: Abelardo Morrell - Coming to Philadelphia!

(source)

Abelardo Morrell is coming back to Philadelphia!!! -> To the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC) on November 18th, 2010 @ 7:00pm!

(source)

I had the pleasure of hearing Morell speak at the PMA in the Fall of 2006, at the onset of my graduate study. I had studied photography in undergrad, had made many photographs, and thought a little bit about the life of those photographs in the world - but I had never thought about the stuff that comes before the photographs, before the images are made, at the moment when they get caught. I had never thought about the mechanics and the machine involved in the act of making a photograph.

Had definitely never thought about it as another way to manipulate the image. *** This is what excites me.

(source)

Abelardo Morell opened my eyes, with his images yes - but with his process double yes. To make these images posted here, Morell used rooms across the world (hotel rooms, gallery rooms, abandoned rooms, etc.) to make simple cameras, Camera Obscura. He made the rooms themselves into the camera by covering the windows in the room with light tight material and removing a one inch square in the center of the window in order to create a simple lens.

(source)

Photography is the capture of light. The capture of light is done so by the camera. The camera is a glorified box used to hold light, let in by a little hole (the lens), until it can be recorded onto the light-sensitive material.

The earliest camera - the Camera Obscura - and the "cameras" Morell creates do not have the mirror system of the modern camera, the mirrors which flip the image over for our eyes to see the right way - therefore the images made in this way are upside down.

Morell's images of hotel rooms made into camera obscura contain not only the room which Morell's view camera sees, but also the image of what the room itself "sees" outside of its window, the image made by the camera obscura along the back walls of the hotel room. These light images of what the hotel room "sees" are cast as upside down images.

Sounds really complicated right?

Maybe, kinda.

(source)

Check out more of Abelardo Morell's work at his website, here. See his process here. Learn more about the Camera Obscura and the basic science of photography, here.

Go to the PPAC's website here.

And attend Abelardo Morell's Artist Lecture & Book Signing

at the PPAC

on November 18th, 2010

at 7:00pm

here: Philadelphia Photo Arts Center

The Crane Building

1400 N. American St.

Philadelphia, PA.

Whew! Sometimes I exhaust myself...

PS Get outside & enjoy that weather - - NOW!