To capture the riotous energy of Times Square in the 1990s, Morell turned to an ancient technology. Documented as early as the 5th century BCE, camera obscuras (“dark rooms”) are dark, enclosed spaces with a small hole on one end that projects an inverted and reversed image of the outside world.

For this image, Morell turned an entire hotel room into a camera obscura, covering the window with black plastic save for a small hole less than half an inch wide. He then set up his large-format camera next to it and left the aperture open for a full two days. The final image juxtaposes the billboards, skyscrapers, and lights of the city, eerily unpeopled because of the long exposure time, with this generic hotel room, overlaying a domestic space with one of the busiest and most famous public squares in the world.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)