Go into a very dark room on a bright day and cover all win-dows. Make a small whole.What you’ll see, is MAGIC.

Abelardo Morell

Camera Obscura photographer

Graphic Design by Natacha Beversuitgeverij A formaat

What made me an artist

quote from Leonardo Da Vinci about the pin-hole camera or “camera obscura”

Camera Obscura, How Abelardo Morell does it

All sorts of interiors around the world

Magically disorienting results

The use of color

Bibliography What made me an artist

quote from Leonardo Da Vinci about the pin-hole camera or “camera obscura”

Camera Obscura, How Abelardo Morell does it

All sorts of interiors around the world

Magically disorienting results

The use of color

Bibliography

What made me an artistI left Cuba with my parents and my sister when I was 14 in 1962. This break with the place where I grew up is probably still stirring at the bottom of much of what I do in art now. Somehow the conflicts of cultures, languages and places that I felt didn’t just scare me, these things also gave me a sense of exhilaration, a feeling that things out there were wild and surreal.My parents’ wonderul courage and hope in the midst of starting a new life from scratch, I know now, gave me the security to look at the strangeness all around me from a somewhat safe place.

Because I didn’t spoke English when I first came, look-ing and seeing became a way to get to know and make impressions of my new country. I arrived in Brunswick at a time when Bowdoin was actively reaching out to diversify its student population. I was recruited out of a Manhatten technical high school. I knew back then that bowdoin was taking a chance on me.I thought Iwas going to be an electrical engineer but af-ter one week in John McKee’s photography class, I knew I wanted to be an artist. One teacher’s lessons in how art could be a way of seeing and at the same time, a way to discover oneself, are lessons that have stayed with me to this day.Photography was so perfectly suited to my sensibility and situation, it gave me a voice, a kind of crazy, out-of-whack voice, at the beginning but a voice. I could fi-nally put into images bottled up feelings of absurdity and alienation -and also joy and delight.

story by Abelardo MorellMay 24, 1997

Being married to Lisa and having my son Brady and my daughter Laura have had the deepest effect on my continu-ing to be an artist. Without them and their support, even when things were not going well, I think I would have kept making other people’s pictures - probably nothing to write home about. Being in a family taught my eyes to pay at-tention to the things close to me, things close to my heart. the pictures I made around the house when I first became a father have influenced much of the work that I do today - from looking at a book with the curiosity of a child to turning ordinary rooms into giant cameras.I finally got the point that art is about playing. Thankfully, I’m not the only artist that Bowdoin has helped educate.

Many dancers, painters, musicians and photographers like me got their start at this college and now show their work all over the world. Learning what pictures are about in the context of a liberal arts education had a powerful effect on my life. The importance of locating art within life and its many disciplines is something lasting that I got out of my time here.Standing here in line with the Moulton Union, where I made my first photographs in the old college darkroom al-most thirty years ago, and the Museum of Art in back of me where totday, they have kindly hung one of my most re-cent pictures, I feel like I am in some kind of special align-ment. Rarely does one see such clear shape and direction in one’s life, especially if you are a graduating senior and the territory ahead may not be so defined. In my case, I think that maybe perseverance, being in love with something for the long run had a lot to do with why I’m here today.Standing between these two building, which are like book-ends to the story of my life so far, reminds me of the promise and power of art to make us believe in the pos-sibilities and openness of life, at least for a moment, like this moment now.

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“Who would believe that so small a space could contain the image of all the universe? O mighty process! What talent can avail to penetrate a nature such as these? What tongue will it be that can unfold so great a wonder? Verily, none! This it is that guides the human discourse to the considering of divine things. Here the figures, here the colors, here all the images of every part of the universe

are contracted to a point. O what a point is so marvelous!”

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

“Who would believe that so small a space could contain the image of all the universe? O

mighty process! What talent can avail to penetrate a nature such as these? What tongue will it be that can un-

fold so great a wonder? Verily, none! This it is that guides the human discourse to the considering of divine things. Here the figures, here the colors, here all the images of every part of the universe are contracted to a point. O what a point

is so marvelous!”

-- Leonardo Da Vinci

Camera ObscuraHow Abelardo Morell does it

Over time, this project has taken him from his living room to all sorts of interiors around the world. One of the statis-factions he gets from making this imagery comes from his seeing the weird and yet natural marrage of the inside and outside.

Abelardo Morell’s first picture using camera obscura was in a darkened living room in 1991. In setting up a room to make this kind of photograph, he covers all windows with black plastic in order to achieve total darkness. Then, he cuts a small hole in the material he uses to cover the windows. This allows an inverted image of the view outside to flood onto te walls of the room. Abelardo Morell would focus his large-format camera on the in-coming image on the wall and expose the film. In the beginning, exposures took five to ten hours.

“Eight-hour exposures of upside-down views of the outside world cast across their varied surfaces -- not just walls and floors, but furniture, appliances and other appurtenances of domestic life.”

“Eight-hour exposures of upside-down views of the outside world cast across their varied surfaces -- not just walls and floors, but furniture, appliances and other appurtenances of domestic life.”

R.H., “The Best Photo Books of the Year,” American Photo

Empire State - New York

Manhatten South

ALL SORTS OF INTERIORS

Manhatten West

Times Square - New York

AROUND THE WORLD

Pantheon - Italy

St Louis - Missouri

Umbrian landscape

“Abelardo Morell had distinguished himself in

the ‘90s as an artist of unique tech-nical elegance and resourcefullness. Not

only has he taken startling pictures unlike any others in the history of photography, but he has done so within the confines of a ‘straight’ aesthetic, without resorting to the stale tricks of surrealist collage or computerized post-

modern manipulation.”

-- Richard Woodward

“One of the satisfactions I get from making this imagery comes from my seeing the weird and yet natural marriage of the inside and outside”

“One of the satisfactions I get from making this imagery comes from my seeing the weird and yet natural marriage of the inside and outside”

Abelardo Morell

A few years ago, In order to push the visual potential of this process, Abe-lardo Morell began to use color film and positioned a lens over the hole in the window plastic in order to add to the overall sharpness and brightness of the incoming image.

Now, Abelardo Morell uses often a prism to make the projection com in right side up. He has also been able to shorten his exposures considerably thanks to digital technology, which in turn makes it possible to capture more momentary light.

“I love the increased sense of reality that the outdoor has

in these new works. the marriage of the outside and the inside is now

made up of more equal partners.”

-- Abelardo Morell

The use of color

Where Galileo died

Olive tree

Sources

Jungle

“Although we may have been taught not to judge a book by its cover, photographer

Abelardo Morell reverses the old saying and delightfully shows us how to relish a book by its look. This inventive and clever photographic ode to the printed word captures all the power-

ful possibilities contained on the page.”

-- J.P. Cohen, Amazon.com

Bibliography

http://www.abelardomorell.net/

Woodward R., “Abelardo Morell Mono-graphs”, TF Editores Spain , Phaidon

Press London

Sante L., “Camera obscura”, Bulfinch Press New York, 2004

Baker N., “A book of books”, Bulfinch Press New York, 2002

Bibliographyhttp://www.abelardomorell.net/

Woodward R., “Abelardo Morell Mono-graphs”, TF Editores Spain , Phaidon

Press London

Sante L., “Camera obscura”, Bulfinch Press New York, 2004

Baker N., “A book of books”, Bulfinch Press New York, 2002

Abelardo Morell’s photographs remind us that photography is more about how we see than the tools we use to create it.

Graphic Design by Natacha Beversuitgeverij A formaat

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