Abelardo Morell: Liminal Spaces

Morell’s earlier work consisted of black and white camera obscuras, such as Camera Obscura: The Cloisters at Lacock Abbey, England, 2003, and Camera Obscura: Courtyard Building, Lacock Abbey, England, 2003. In 2005, Morell turned to producing camera obscura works in color and eventually incorporated technical refinements. He began to employ a diopter lens, an optical tool that significantly reduces exposure time and increases the brightness and sharpness of the image. For some pictures, he used a prism to change the orientation of his projections from upside down to right side up. Always intrigued with optics and how an image is constructed, Morell is known for photographs that transform and transcend the ordinary.  “The spiritual aspect of my work has more to do with the sense that things in the world can be perceived and accepted as being in some respect alive. I try to approach everything that I photograph with this sense of wide-eyed awe.”  In Morell’s own words, “Life is too big, too radiant and chaotic... Since we cannot afford to see Life directly, we all need a medium to enable us to see it.” It is his tool to reveal the secret, and to make visible the invisible.

Long interested in what he calls “symbolic paper” — things like maps, money, and books — Morell became keenly attentive to their material qualities. The material quality of a map, money, and a book are all the same, given they are all made of paper. It is the contents, or symbols, on the paper that then create their value. The manipulated values of material are represented in his work Paper Self, 2012. He is also fascinated with photographing everyday objects; experimenting with ways to light them or set them in motion in order to usurp our familiarity with them.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962. Morell received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and his MFA from The Yale University School of Art. He has received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College in 1997 and from Lesley University in 2014. He was professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston from 1983 to 2010.

His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1998) by Dutton Children’s Books, A Camera in a Room (1995) by Smithsonian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell (2005), published by Phaidon Press. The Universe Next Door (2013), published by The Art Institute of Chicago. Tent-Camera (2018), published by Nazraeli Press. Flowers for Lisa (2018), published by Abrams Books.

He has received a number of awards and grants, which include a Guggenheim fellowship in 1994 and an Infinity Award in Art from ICP in 2011. In November 2017, he received a Lucie Award for achievement in fine art.His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, The Chicago Art Institute, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Houston Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum and several other museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty in Los Angeles and The High Museum in Atlanta closed in May 2014 after a year of travel. Most recently, his work was included in the exhibition Ansel Adams in Our Time, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.