Word: morelle
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Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye, on view at the MFA through April 11, is the first major traveling exhibition of this contemporary photographer's work. Morell, born 1948 in Cuba, has concentrated for the past decade on several projects besides his camera obscura series; his domestic still lifes, his...
Until the mid-80s, Morell was a street photographer in the tradition of Robert Frank. He strolled through cities, hoping to capture the accidental compositions of the metropolis, chance photogenic oddities. With the birth of his son, Morell discovered the wonders of the domestic interior, the strangeness of objects--there...
His new fascination with the beauty of surfaces, and unsuspected symmetries prompted studies such as "Two Forks Under Water" (1993). These photographs, the earliest in the exhibit, are the least interesting. But his decision to photograph the transformations of objects would pay off later. "From physicality," Morell said, "ideas emerge...
Morell's investigation of objects led him beyond his home and into museums and libraries. While his earlier photographs framed and isolated the driftings of his household, in this series he manipulated the objects to be photographed much more actively. In one of my favorites, "Dictionary" (1994), the lens peers...
This willful approach paid off; through visual puns and analogies, the photographs play with the physicality of objects--books, paintings, objets d'art--not usually thought of as wholly physical. Morell delights in the frame of an oil portrait, the ghost negative of light on a color plate viewed at...