Camera Obscura Image of Courtyard Building, Lacock Abbey
Abelardo Morell (b.1948)
Category
Photographs
Date
2003
Materials
Paper
Measurements
508 mm (H)608 mm (W)
Order this imageCollection
Fox Talbot Museum, Wiltshire
NT 1116951
Caption
The outside gloriously merges with the inside in this disorienting and atmospheric photograph, created by Abelardo Morell with the use of a camera obscura (Latin for ‘dark room’). Morell pays homage to inventor William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77) and the place where his revolutionary photographic negative was born – Lacock Abbey. Reviving the process that so captivated Talbot, Morell evokes the inspiration that lay both within and beyond Lacock’s walls. Except for a tiny hole through which light could travel, Morell darkened the Bottle Room at Lacock Abbey, where many early photographic experiments took place. Through the hole, the south-east corner of the courtyard, chimneys and Tapestry Room windows are projected onto the wall – upside down and back to front due to the way light travels. In 1835 the world’s first paper negative (reproduced on page 9) depicted a latticed window of Lacock Abbey. It was captured on sensitised paper through the lens-covered hole of a small wooden box – named ‘a mousetrap’ by Constance Talbot (1811–80). Inspired by his own fascination with the process of creating images over extended periods of time, Morell left the shutter of a large-format camera open for several hours to freeze both the projected image and the darkened space of the room – the interior and exterior become one. This image takes its place among other impressive camera-obscura photographs Morell has made in the United States, Cuba and continental Europe.
Summary
A monochrome photograph created through a pinhole camera obscura process at Lacock Abbey. The south-east courtyard, chimneys and Tapestry Room are projected inside the Bottle Room at Lacock Abbey and photographed as one by Abelardo Morell (b.1948) in 2003. Morell created a second photograph on site, depicting the cloisters - NT 1116952
Marks and inscriptions
"Abelardo Morell / Gift of the Photographer to the Fox Talbot Museum / 1/30 / Camera Obscura Image of Courtyard Building, Lacock Abbey, England, March 16 2003" written in pencil on back by photographer
Makers and roles
Abelardo Morell (b.1948), manufacturer