Word: photograph
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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During the 16 hours that Abelardo Morell's camera was trained on Times Square, thousands must have passed through the field of his lens. But not one is recorded. The city of his photograph is completely deserted, and the reason for this lies in Morell's famous and peculiar method of photography...
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 explorations of books, maps and paintings and his illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are also presented. All his photographs are large-format silver gelatin prints. His photographic technique is traditional, but he is nimbly inventive in his manipulation of the objects he chooses to photograph...
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 was "a huge landscape of...things" to be investigated. Like a Columbus of the kitchen floor, Morell began to photograph cooking eggs, refrigerators, building blocks and realized that "you don't have to go to Tibet to find a great picture...
...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," and in the next series, I was delighted to see that yes, they...
Next to the president's photograph is his pledge to the workers at Mike's---a pledge that, laughingly, Fiorentino says the president managed to keep: "If I win the presidency, I'll come back here myself. I promise...