November 16, 2024 through April 27, 2025
Rodale Gallery
Abelardo Morell (American, b. Cuba, 1948) Camera Obscura: View of El Vedado Looking North, Havana, Cuba, 2014, archival pigment print. Gift of Jon and Nicky Ungar.
Abelardo Morell’s unconventional photographs provoke curiosity and wonder. Using optical science as well as illusion, he reimagines the world around us.
Morell (American, b. Cuba, 1948) is best known for his use of the camera obscura process. A camera obscura is an ancient technology—a darkened room that admits light through a pinhole, projecting an image of the view outside onto the opposite wall. Morell’s innovation is in transforming everyday spaces into camera obscura: his projections interact with the room’s furniture and décor, and he photographs the results. Intermingling past and present, indoors and outside, these works encourage reflection on our relationship with memory, nature, and place.
Abelardo Morell (American, b. Cuba, 1948) Flowers for Lisa #57, 2017, archival pigment print. Allentown Art Museum: Gift of Jon and Nicky Ungar.
Unexpected Perspectives features sixteen of Morell’s inventive photographs drawn from the Museum’s holdings. In addition to his camera obscura works, this exhibition also highlights a selection of photographs from Flowers for Lisa. This varied series of floral still lifes alludes to philosophy, art history, and mortality through both physical and digital manipulations.
Morell’s complex images subvert our expectations, uncovering new interest and beauty in familiar subjects. As he explains, “It’s encouraging to see strangeness come out of what we all know.”
This exhibition is supported through the generosity of the Bernard and Audrey Berman Foundation and the Leon C. and June W. Holt Endowment.