University of New England

Art Gallery presents retrospective of photographer Abelardo Morell

PORTLAND -  Photographer Abelardo Morell returns to the Art Gallery at the University of New England for the second visit in his illustrious career. The retrospective of Morell’s work will be on display November 30, 2007 - January 27, 2008, on the University of New England’s Westbrook Campus in Portland.

This retrospective of the Cuban-born photographer will include works from his early oeuvre, as well as works from his book project, camera obscura, time and motion, and children's toys.

Born in Havana in 1948, Abelardo Morell has been making photographs since 1969, seven years after coming to the United States.  Following his
graduation from Bowdoin College in 1977, he received an MFA degree from Yale in 1981.  He returned to Bowdoin to serve on the faculty during which time he had his first one-man exhibition at Westbrook College. 

At first following the paths of photographers whose work he admired, he soon found both his content and his style, shooting familiar objects in ways that we have never seen them, creating images uniquely his:  an inverted city skyline on an inside wall, surrealistically overlapping the room's furnishings;  the sculpted shape or pages of a book so close up as to be abstract; the towering everyday world from the perspective of his crawling son. 

When needed he has invented the very means for expression his vision, such as turning a  room into a giant camera obscura by taping black tarps over windows allowing just a pinhole of light to penetrate.  Widely exhibited, published, and collected, Morell is currently a professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art.

For more information, visit http://www.abelardomorell.net/

(Press release posted Oct. 23, 2007)