Abelardo Morell is as much alchemist as he is photographer. In his work, the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline imprint themselves on a rumpled bed and the Pantheon fills a Roman hotel room, serenely projected across a curtained window, the elegant curves of a couch, and a wall fresco. Traditional photography has always been something of a magical process―using chemicals to make permanent something as ephemeral as light. But Morell takes us back to the camera obscura, a predecessor of the modern camera, which was used by artists such as Vermeer as a compositional aid. A small hole—or lens—in a darkened box will project an (upside down) image of a lighted scene outside of it. Morell takes it to a new level by creating his camera obscura from a darkened room, projecting the outside world inside by means of a lens. He photographs the resulting images in long time exposures, capturing unexpected meldings of interior and exterior. In many ways, Morell’s work emulates the mystery of light itself, whether he is rigging a camera obscura from a tent to project an image of the Chisos Mountains onto the pebbled ground, or directing a powerful searchlight at an evening landscape, as it opens a window into the dark.

Morell is a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and an Alturas Foundation Grant, among other awards. His work has been published in seven monographs and is featured in many other books. His work is included in the permanent collections of many museums, among them the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibits widely; last year alone he had solo exhibitions in Pingyao, China; Madrid, Spain; Wilshire, England; and San Antonio, Texas.