Photographer; Abelardo Morell

Abelardo Morell is a Boston-based photographer. He moved from cuba in 1962 to New York where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts. He has a specific collection dedicated to books. He states, 'One day in 1993, I was looking at a book of works by El Greco. As I turned a page, it's surface caught light from a window at a funny angle, changing a reproduction of a painting into a shimmering distortion. What i saw wasn't El Greco anymore, but was a beautiful new image.' The collection of photographs range from the most common photography of books to the very rare and different. Also in his Biography he says that during this project, what he enjoyed most about it was spending a good amount of time looking, smelling, holding and reading a variety of books, and I believe his Photography shows the passion and enjoyment that Morell got out of doing this project.

What I love about Abelardo Morell's work is that it doesn't have a story to tell, it merely Photographs the beauty of books and their appearance. Personally, the reason I chose this topic was because I love to read, yet I love to smell books and feel the pages when flicking through, therefore because Morell feels the exact same and chose to Photograph his love for books and their beauty, I would love to do capture this within my own Photography and can inspire me later on within this project as to my developments. I believe the feel and texture of old/new/fat/thin books has a big impact on the reader before they even begin reading. I also believe, a great lover of books prefers the feel of physically reading a book instead of using electronic devices as technology is much greater today. As we see in the series, the main composition of all of his Photographs are packed with books. There is no room for anything else in the composition as the book is the main subject within the Photographs. Morell captures the immense detail within books and there are a variety of old and new books therefore producing different textures within the selection. The lighting varies, however mainly natural lighting is used, therefore when the black and white filter is put onto the photograph and it is cropped, the lighting used shows off the tones and shadowing within the photograph. This, however could still be done with using the studio and using the studio lights, as you would place them in a certain position for the lighting to hit the book right to create the shadow.