Details

Title

Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room

Artist/Maker

Abelardo Morell (American, born Cuba, 1948)

Date

1997

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Contact the museum for more information

Credit

Purchase with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust

Accession #

2002.279

Location

Currently not on view

This photograph demonstrates the basic scientific principles of a camera obscura: if a lens or aperture is placed in one side of a completely dark chamber, it will select and focus the rays of light from the outside to create an inverted image of the external scene projected onto a surface opposite to the chamber. Morell’s "Camera Obscura" series features many surreal scenes such as skyscrapers inverted on New York hotel room walls, but this view of the rugged Grand Tetons landscape projected upside-down into the safe and bland bedroom, carefully centered on a small elk statue, is an especially playful and ironic commentary on the way we inhabit, experience, and photograph the natural landscape.

Image Copyright

© Abelardo Morell.