In 2000, the year Morell became a United States citizen, he was awarded a fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, an artists' community housed in a medieval castle near the Italian town of Umbertide. Philanthropist Ursula Corning began the foundation in 1995, bringing together visual artists, musical composers and writers from around the world. Morell created a series of camera obscura photographs in private homes in the neighborhood, looking out onto the Umbrian countryside. In this image from the series, a humble bedroom is transformed by the camera obscura reflection of the scene outside its window. The artist set his camera to photograph the rumpled bed in profile. Light streams into the room from the left, casting the bed frame in shadow and creating a fencelike grid on the wall. In contrast to this modest, prosaic space, a magnificent Umbrian landscape is spread across the wall like a dream vision. Leafy trees in the foreground rustle in the breeze, giving way to farm fields, meadows and gardens bounded by tree-lined fence rows. A river circles through the landscape, as hills roll gently into the distance. The sky seems bright and cloudless, and casts an eerie glow into the room. With strange precision, the hilly horizon crosses over the light switches on the interior wall, as if the whole project might be switched on or off at will.

from Acton, A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame: Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, 2019)