Abelardo Morell (born 1948,

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

, Cuba) is a contemporary artist widely known for turning rooms into camera obscuras and then capturing the marriage of interior and exterior in large format photographs. He is also known for his 'tent-camera,' a device he invented to merge landscapes with the texture and composition of the ground where he places his camera and tripod to record the simultaneity of close and far, majestic and mundane. Formerly, Morell was a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Life and career

Morell and his family fled

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

in 1962, moving to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Morell earned a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

from

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. When Bowdoin was chartered in 1794, Maine was still a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college offers 34 majors and 36 minors, as well as several joint eng ...

in 1977, and a Master of Fine Arts from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

School of Art in 1981. He received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree from Bowdoin in 1997. Morell is well known in the photographic community for creating ''

camera obscura A camera obscura (; ) is a darkened room with a aperture, small hole or lens at one side through which an image is 3D projection, projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. ''Camera obscura'' can also refer to analogous constructions su ...

'' images in various places around the world and photographing these. Morell was awarded the

Cintas Foundation Oscar Benjamin Cintas y Rodriguez, (31 Mar 1887 in Sagua la Grande, Cuba – 11 May 1957 in New York City, N.Y.) was a prominent sugar and railroad magnate who served as Cuba's ambassador to the United States from 1932 until 1934. Career He ...

fellowship in 1992 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1993. Other awards he has received include the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

's Infinity Award in 2011. In 1998 Morell was an artist-in-residence at Boston's

Gardner Museum The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was foun ...

, and the following year, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts hosted his retrospective ''Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye''. Morell served as a professor (now

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

) of photography at the

Massachusetts College of Art Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation’s oldest art schools, the only publicly funded independent art school ...

. Edwynn Houk Gallery is his exclusive representation, with his first show with the gallery displayed in their Zürich, Switzerland location in June 2013. A documentary on elements of Morell's life and work, ''Shadow of the House'', was released in 2007.Shadow of the House (2007)
/ref> The first retrospective of Morell's work in fifteen years was held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013, in an exhibition entitled ''Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door''. It was subsequently shown at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

Books by Morell

*''A Camera in a Room''. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. *''Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye''. Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, Calif. 1999. *''A Book of Books''. Bulfinch, 2002. *''Camera Obscura''. Bulfinch. 2004. *''Abelardo Morell''. Phaidon. 2008. * ''The Universe Next Door'' published by The Art Institute of Chicago. 2013 * ''Tent-Camera'' published by Nazraeli Press. 2018 * ''Flowers for Lisa'' published by Abrams Books. 2018

References

External links

Photographer's websiteAbelardo Morell at Gallery 339Abelardo Morell on Widewalls.ch
1948 births Living people American photographers Bowdoin College alumni Yale University alumni Cuban emigrants to the United States Massachusetts College of Art and Design faculty Cuban photographers {{cuba-artist-stub