Apollonia Morrill loves old buildings, can’t get enough of the ghosts of things past.
Based in San Francisco, Morrill has created four documentary series that capture the spirit of an historic space. She’s taken her clean abstract style to look at San Francisco’s Castro Theater, a vintage movie house; San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal, a once thriving commuter hub that will soon be torn down; the Kalaupapa leper colony in Hawaii which is now a memorial park and the Metals Bank Building in Butte, Montana which had its heyday during the early 1900s copper mining boom.
This red curtain is from her series on the Castro Theater. Morrill never takes a sweeping view, just presents fragmentary glimpses of architectural details, making observers feel as if they’re peering through a keyhole or a small window. Her images offer flashes of perception, a fleeting vision of a stairwell, a glance at a tiled floor, a row of theater chairs caught in the corner of an eye, an old janitor’s mop hiding in the shadows, ceiling lights reflected in the sheen of an old granite floor. In places touched by history you cannot recreate the scene, only re-imagine, which is exactly what Morrill does with her elegant renderings of empty rooms and corridors.
She will be having a show at SF Camerawork from October 23rd to November 17th.
If you like abandoned buildings, take a look at New York-based Lisa Kereszi’s documentary photo series on Governor’s Island, a decommissioned military base at the mouth of the East River. The series has been published as a book as well.
