How Abelardo Morell Uses the Camera Obscura and Tent/Camera

Abelardo Morell builds photographs around an optical device that predates the camera itself: the camera obscura. According to his website, he is "renowned for using the camera obscura and his own invention of the Tent/Camera," and his bodies of work are "defined by the contemporary use of a technology that predates the camera." In practice, that means he turns a room, or a portable tent, into the camera, then photographs the projected image inside it. The result is a single photograph that fuses an exterior view with the interior surface it lands on.

What a camera obscura is

A camera obscura is a dark space with a small opening that lets light in. The light carries an inverted image of the outside scene, which falls onto the opposite wall or surface. No lens-based camera is required for the projection itself — the room or box is the camera.

Morell's contribution is not the device but its use: he treats the projection as the subject of a contemporary photograph rather than as a scientific demonstration.

How Morell adapts it

The website's series list shows the camera obscura running through decades of work, including Camera Obscura, Tent Camera, and Pictures on the Ground. The recurring method is consistent:

1. Choose an interior. A room with a view becomes the dark chamber.
2. Let the outside in. Light through an opening projects the exterior scene onto walls, floors, and objects.
3. Photograph the projection in place. The exposure records the inverted view merged with the room's own surfaces — furniture, wallpaper, a bed.

Because the projection lands on whatever is already there, the image reads as two places at once: the landmark outside and the lived-in space inside.

The Tent/Camera as a portable version

A fixed room limits where the camera obscura can go. Morell's Tent/Camera solves that by making the dark chamber movable — a tent that can be set up on location, so the projection can be made in the field rather than only indoors. The website credits the Tent/Camera as his own invention and pairs it with the Tent Camera series.

This is the key mechanical difference:

Where the results show up

• Camera Obscura — the foundational series, projecting views into rooms.
• Tent Camera — the same principle carried into the field with his portable invention.
• Pictures on the Ground — projection-based work in which the image meets the ground rather than a wall, including the In the Terrain of Monet and In the Terrain of Van Gogh projects.

Across all of them, the technique is the through-line: an old optical phenomenon, a contemporary photograph, and a picture that holds two locations in one frame.