Abelardo Morell (http://www.abelardomorell.net)
My father and I stumbled across Morell's work three or four years ago at the Chicago Art Institute. We'd been visiting several schools in the area on my wild college search and wandered into the museum for a nice break from interviews and info sessions. As I was thoroughly disgusted with the organization of the Modern Art wing, my father led me into a gallery filled with large photographs that immediately drew the two of us in with their intricacies. My father used to teach photography at Suffield Academy in Connecticut, and I had pursued a passion for photography in my high school's lab (which rivals most colleges') for several years.
Some idiot had decided the photographs required no explanation. My father and I recognized the images for what they were, but the crowd of museum-goers clearly had no photographic experience and assumed the images were just weird and tacky double-exposures. My father and I caught the attention of several people and explained to them how the images worked. Immediately, the viewers were more attentive and curious about the work.
(And then I realized I was kind of a snob about museums, and if I think I can do better, I might as well try. And now I'm an art history major with grand dreams of a Museum Studies degree. Oh dear.)
A year or two later, my high school photo teacher informed me that Morell was speaking at Hampshire College, about twenty minutes away. My best friend and I crammed ourselves into the back of Mr Hing's tiny Corvette and went on our way to see this amazing person speak. His photographs intrigued me because I could relate to his inspiration and curiosity. All of his pictures are about light, which is the very thing that has always amazed me. I'm fascinated by shadows and reflections and refractions, and that is exactly what his artwork deals with. Light is the very subject matter at hand, discussed through the means of capturing the interactions of light with the objects at hand.
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