Author(s): Richard B. Woodward

Fine Art

In 1986, Abelardo Morell began a family and his fascination with his son engaged a new interest in this domestic environment as a subject. Morell began exploring the world from a child's perspective - approaching mundane household objects in a new way that challenges the viewer's perception of reality and how we see. Morell transforms everyday objects through the use of distorting angles and extreme close-ups, surprising perspectives that confuse and jar with our expectations: viewed from below a stack of toy blocks tower over the viewer, a close-up of liquid pouring from a jar seems ominous and dramatic rather than an everyday occurrence. Similarly, Morell continued to transform the familiar into the surprising in his series of photographs of books, maps, American money and, more recently, a series that illustrates a new edition of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". This preoccupation with reality and illusion is most clearly realised in Morell's series of camera obscura images. He takes an ordinary room and tapes black plastic over the windows, leaving only a 3/8" hole for the light.