Do you remember how terrifying it was to stand at the top of a slide for the first time? Or how fun it was to make shadow puppets on the overhead projection when your teacher wasn't looking? How about when long shadows and distorted reflections were wonders not easily explained by physics?
Well, Abelardo Morell does remember. His photographs, inspired by his young son's curiosity and wonder for the world, give new life to objects rendered lifeless by the transition to adulthood.
"Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye," an exhibit on display at the Bayly Art Museum through March 25, shows how a camera can alter our perception of conventional shapes and spaces. The exhibit is divided into three sections: "Domestic Objects and Optical Phenomena," "Books, Maps and Paintings" and "Camera Obscura." Although all three sections contain striking new looks at commonplace objects, "Camera Obscura" is by far the most amazing, as Morell turns the genre of landscape photography on its head (literally!).
In all three sections, Morell uses a sharp eye and an even sharper lens to capture the ways in which light and shadows are given texture and are trapped by the surfaces they fall on. In turn, the camera traps these moments - which may have only been an instant in time - and makes them last much longer. Morell's son Brady inspired this move to look at the mundane in new ways.
In the "Domestic Objects and Optical Phenomena" section, many of the photographs feature Brady as subject matter or show things from his perspective. By using a shallow depth of focus, Morell's camera makes a messy pail of crayons into a bottomless pit, a hallway seem miles long and the top of a slide seems like the top of the world. A highlight of this section is "Footprints," a photo of wet footprints bathed in a swath of white window light, trailing away from a recently used bathtub. The photo seems to leap off of the wall.
Morell continues to give ordinary objects new meanings in the "Books, Maps and Paintings" section, which shows photographs that expand the way we look at two-dimensional paintings and maps. Morell's work as a professor with the Massachusetts College of Art and the Gardner Museum (both in Boston) has him working very closely with historic works of art and literature. In his photos of expensive art history books, glossy pages act as mirrors with images printed on them. He finds ways to make flat objects - such as written letters or lines on a map - into otherworldly, textured surfaces. He does this most notably in "Map in Sink" and "Water Alphabet."
From the Gardner Museum, Morell uses creative photographic framing to give classic paintings new meaning. The highlight of these experiments is "Tim and Rembrandt." At first glance, the portrait of a 17th century Dutch man and the 20th century black man standing near it don't seem to have much in common, but Morell has a way of bringing the two together in the photo. He makes the Rembrandt portrait seem as though it is the man's reflection.
Although the two aforementioned sections contain unusual views of ordinary objects, nothing parallels the experimentation of "The Camera Obscura." This section derives its name from the technique used in making photos. Camera obscura (Latin for dark room) is an age-old practice and a precursor to modern cameras. Morell creates his camera obscura by covering all the windows of a room and leaving only a 3/8-inch opening for light to enter. This projects an upside-down, inverted scene of whatever is outside the opening onto the opposite wall. He has created camera obscura images of his neighbor's house on his bedroom wall and of the Eiffel Tower on the wall of a French hotel room.
The sheer beauty of Morell's black and white prints is inherent in their simplicity. Morell has an uncanny ability to find the serene in the mundane. What could be stark photographs of mere objects exude a strange warmth when viewed through Morell's distinguished lens.
When Morell comes to the University to lecture March 1 (5:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall 153), he plans to set up a local camera obscura, possibly either at Monticello or on the Lawn.
Through Morell's photographs, viewers can expect to travel to a place where even the smallest detail holds a world of beauty and wonder. His works take us back to a time when the physical laws that govern the world around us were not taken for granted; in every shadow and every reflection lay a world of discoveries.
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