Abelardo Morell (Cuban-American, b. 1948)
Tent-Camera Image on Ground: View of the Brooklyn Bridge–Brooklyn Side, 2011
Archival pigment print on board
44.75 x 60 in.
Gift of John Andrew MacMahon, Class of 1995
Hundreds of members of our community walk the halls of Chambers each day, but few stop to observe the artworks that bring the building to life. Among such pieces is Tent–Camera Image on Ground: Rooftop View of the Brooklyn Bridge–Brooklyn Side. Created in 2011 by contemporary artist Abelardo Morell, this piece is an archival pigment print on board. A gift of John Andrew MacMahon, class of 1995, this work is one of thousands that make up the collection of the Van Every/Smith Galleries.
Born in 1948, Morell is a Cuban-American photographer. He holds a BA and an honorary doctorate from Bowdoin College, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. His work has been shown at many prestigious institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Morell is best known for transforming entire rooms into camera obscuras. He merges interior and exterior worlds into single large-format photographic images. He invented the tent-camera: similar to the mechanics of a periscope, he uses a light-proof tent to project landscapes onto the ground beneath the camera. He then uses his camera inside this darkened space to record the effect, as seen here in his image of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Morell’s innovative technique creates darkness throughout this piece; however, it is not equally distributed. For example, darkness is particularly concentrated in the foreground, inhibiting the viewer’s ability to perceive what appears to be a parking lot, some buildings, and several vehicles. Further, the darkness partially merges with the striking black silhouette of a tree’s bare branches, rendering it nearly invisible.
Conversely, the darkness brings contrast to the lighter sections of the image, particularly those which are blue or white, such as the sea and the sky. All in all, Morell’s technique promotes a somewhat ominous atmosphere in this work, adding a layer of thought-provoking complexity to the print. Further, it urges the viewer to consider the nature of structures, both natural, such as the tree, and man-made, such as the bridge itself, whose length and structure dominate the horizontal composition. Here, his camera obscura technique functions by placing some elements in the foreground, while letting others fade into obscurity.
– Heidi McGannon ’26