Abelardo Morell: Betweenbooks

Entrellibres. Fotografies d’Abelardo Morell (Betweenbooks: Photographs by Abelardo Morell) could be called a veritable visual tribute to the written word. The prestigious photographer Abelardo Morell expresses the love he feels for books and art in general through his work. During this current Books and Reading Year in Barcelona, the Sala Xavier Miserachs exhibition gallery has wanted to join in with this tribute to a subject that offers us so many experiences and fine moments. We are therefore able to contemplate these personal and elegant black and white photographs by Abelardo Morell, which make some very unusual books appear before us: art books, books that become art works in themselves, books whose size reminds us of sculptures and, in short, books everywhere.

The photographer himself comments on his experiences during this project:

“My attraction to books was not so much related to their peculiarity or preciosity but to my desire to find stories in them that I wanted to tell. The aim of my work is to make photographs of these imaginary narrations. One of the greatest pleasures that this work has given me has been to dedicate a lot of time to looking, hugging, smelling and reading a great deal of books: big, tall, ostentatious, humble, funny, sad, proud, slanderous and radiant books. Naturally, there are many more books alongside these that need to be found – by anybody! But for me, the magic of these objects lies between the photograph of a book and the book itself. I have sometimes had the marvellous experience of arriving at the knowledge that books contain all of life’s material, everything between A to Z.”

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1948. He immigrated with his parents to the United States when he was 14 years old. He has had numerous individual exhibitions, mainly in the United States (Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, San Francisco, Detroit, etc), as well as in Canada, Israel, London, Paris, Tokyo, Mexico, etc. New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and over 40 other museums and institutions from around the world have incorporated works by Abelardo Morell into their collections. He has received numerous prizes, amongst which is the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993.

He has published eight photography books. He is currently Professor in Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art.

Pressetext

Betweenbooks
Photographs by Abelardo Morell
Ort: Espai Xavier Miserachs