© Abelardo Morell
Currently not on view
Camera Obscura: La Giraldilla de la Habana in Room with Broken Wall, Cuba,
2002
Abelardo Morell, born 1948, Havana, Cuba; active Boston, MA
2018-47
Morell has long experimented with the camera obscura, a technique in which a small aperture allows light into an otherwise dark space, producing an optical phenomenon of an inverted projection of the view outside. In 2002, Morell returned to Cuba, from which he fled with his family at the age of fourteen, to continue his series of photographs of camera obscura projections in private rooms. A meditation on photography, loss, and remembrance, this photograph casts a projection of the watchtower that is part of one of the oldest colonial fortresses in the Americas onto an interior wall of a derelict building, juxtaposing the fort’s endurance with the neglect of the surrounding structures.
Information
Title
Camera Obscura: La Giraldilla de la Habana in Room with Broken Wall, Cuba
Dates
2002
Maker
Medium
Inkjet print
Dimensions
81.3 × 101.6 cm (32 × 40 in.)
frame: 104.1 × 124.5 × 4.8 cm (41 × 49 × 1 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Mary Trumbull Adams Art Fund, and gift of the Department of Art and Archaeology in honor of Esther da Costa Meyer
Object Number
2018-47
Place Made
North America, Cuba, Havana
Signatures
Signed, titled, dated, and editioned on label on verso
Culture
Type
Techniques
The artist. [Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, NY]; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, 2018.
