By Aaron Burden
Abelardo Morell
Basic Facts Abelardo Morell was born in Cuba in 1948 and grew up mostly in New York. He studied at Bowdin College and Yale University. Abelardo Morell is best know for his use of a cenrety old technique know as ‘camera obscura’. Below are a few examples of Abelardo Morell’s work. Abelardo would use a normal room such as a bedroom as a screen for him to project onto. As you can see below he would often use well-‐known sites as his centrepiece. Once he has set up is large scale ‘camera obscura’, he would photograph the room to preserve the work.
This image stood out to me because of the colour contrast between the bed and the projected image. In the projected background you can see the Brooklyn Bridge, which is illuminated by a warm sandy coloured light. This contrasts with the dark brown of the wooden headboard and the deep red of the pillows and bed sheets. Although the main centre of attention is the image of the Brooklyn Bridge, the strong colours of the bed brings the viewer back to the location that the photo was taken which is a bedroom. I believe this is intentional in order to keep the viewer in 2 places at ones. This is further supported by the strength of the red in the image, as it is very distinct and hard to ignore.
By Aaron Burden
I chose this image because of the contrast of environments shown in this image. The projection shows nature consisting of plants such as trees. From my research I found out that the projection is of Central Park in New York. With that bit of information it adds another side to the image. You have an image of nature being projected into a man-‐made structure such as an apartment building, but at the same time that slice of nature is right in the middle of a man-‐made jungle of buildings. Another way of looking at it is that it’s an ‘upside down idea’ that a park like this could exist in a city such as New York.
I picked this image because of the way it uses the room’s diminutions to show the scope of the image projected. In this image you can see that the image projected has covered the not only the wall but also the celling to help communicate the scope of the cityscape. The projected image is of Manhattan, which is a large high rise American city. Another aspect to this image is that it is in black and white instead of colour like many other photos taken by Abelardo Morell. I believe that it’s to emphasize the colourless nature of a large city made from dull coloured materials such as steel and bricks.
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