The clever photographs of Abelardo Morell form a new exhibition at the Fox Talbot Museum.

The exhibition, called 'Abelardo Morell - Through the Camera's Eye', runs until Sunday 13 December 2009.

It includes a room-sized camera obscura, set up in the grounds of Lacock Abbey, large enough for you to walk into and see the abbey beamed live, upside down and outside in.

Abelardo Morell and his work

The signature photographs of Abelardo Morell cleverly turn full-size rooms into the optical device called a camera obscura – the forerunner to the modern camera – and then he photographs what happens inside the room.

© Image courtesy of the Artist and the Bonni Benrubi Gallery

'At first impression, some of Abelardo’s photographs look wrong,' says Roger Watson, Curator of the museum.

'The cityscape or landscape you see appears to be upside down. At a second glance you’ll see that there are some objects in the images that are right side up too.'

To create a room-size camera obscura, Morell covers all windows and doors with dark plastic leaving a single, small opening (about 3/8” in diameter). The opening allows light to enter the room from outside, projecting an inverted scene onto the furniture and wall.

He then sets up his tripod and view camera inside the room, opens the shutter, and leaves. Most of the images - city skylines and open landscapes resting upside down atop ordinary objects around the room - require an eight-hour exposure.

'Abe Morell really understands the box we call a camera and he understands the basic nature of light better than any photographer I’ve known', says Roger.

'He doesn’t try to trick cameras into doing something they don’t. He doesn’t work against the grain to make images that deny their very photographic nature, but instead he works slowly and seamlessly with the building blocks of photography to create strange and beautiful images that celebrate the medium.'

His non-camera obscura images, also on display, show the fruit of this slow and careful way of working. His images of books, pencils and mirrors have been called meditations on the reality of objects.

Co-Curator Laura Brown assisted Abe Morrell, in 2003, when he came to Lacock Abbey to shoot examples of his camera obscura works of the estate. They are now among its permanent collection.

'How can a flat map represent a three-dimensional landscape? How can a book be a mountain and then a wave? How does a mirror cast a shadow instead of a reflection? How does the world outside appear in a darkened room?' says Laura.

'These extraordinary pictures give us a tantalising taste of the reality of light and shadow.'

'Morell’s images aren't defined by some ‘decisive moment’ captured by lightning reflexes and a bit of luck. Morrell works like a fine craftsman - the final photograph as carefully crafted as an inlaid box, locked from the inside.

'But there are few artists who can so delight us with the treasures inside that box, just by making one, small, hole.'