Abelardo Morell, The Universe Next Door, 2013

Over the past twenty-five years, Abelardo Morell (b. 1948) has earned inter­na­tional praise for his images that use the lan­guage of pho­tog­ra­phy to explore visual sur­prise and won­der. Born in Havana, Cuba, Morell came to the United States as a teenager in 1962 and later stud­ied pho­tog­ra­phy, earn­ing an MFA from Yale Uni­ver­sity. He gained atten­tion for inti­mate, black-and-white pic­tures of domes­tic objects from a child’s point of view, inspired by the birth of his son in 1986, as well as images in which he turns a room into a giant cam­era obscura, pro­ject­ing exte­rior views onto inte­rior spaces; and pho­tographs of books that revel in their sen­sory materiality.

In more recent years, he has turned to color, explor­ing the cam­era obscura with a painterly delight and inno­vat­ing a tent cam­era that projects out­door scenes onto a tex­tured ground. Across his career, Morell has approached pho­tog­ra­phy with remark­able wit and cre­ativ­ity, exam­in­ing every­day objects with child­like curios­ity. The first in-depth treat­ment in fif­teen years, this hand­some and impor­tant book exam­ines Morell’s career to the present day, includ­ing his ear­lier works in black-and-white and never before pub­lished color pho­tographs from the past decade. An essay by Eliz­a­beth Siegel, along with a recent inter­view with the artist and an illus­trated chronol­ogy of his life and works, offers a riv­et­ing por­trait of this con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­pher and his ongo­ing artis­tic endeavors.