The Cuban-American photographer Abelardo Morell (born 1948) is known for his work using a Tent/Camera, a device based on the principles of a camera obscura that allows him to combine in a single image the features of a landscape view with whatever happens to be underfoot—leaves, blades of grass, dirt, pebbles, and so on. The result is a new and often surprising photograph that owes its uniqueness to artistic intention as well as elements of chance. When ground-level details from the terrain are superimposed onto a landscape vista, they alter the image in unexpected ways and yield sumptuous pictorial effects.

Since adapting the Tent/Camera for outdoor use about a decade ago, Morell has been connecting his innovative techniques with storied traditions of nineteenth-century landscape painting. He has spent time in France and England and taken photographs at locations that directly inspired Van Gogh, Monet, and Constable. By following in these artists’ paths, he seeks not to copy their paintings but rather to make new pictures in their spirit.

An interesting dialogue about the relationship between painting and photography began in the mid-nineteenth century, just after photography was invented. When Morell takes his fascination with optics and technology into the realm of landscape, he reactivates this dialogue. For him, the Tent/Camera pictures are an effort to “marry photographic vision with painterly patina.” This exhibition focuses on two artists, Claude Monet and John Constable, who are not only touchstones for Morell’s artistic vision but also mainstays of the Clark Art Institute’s permanent collection. The large-scale, richly layered photographs offer a bridge between historical and contemporary experiences of place.

Abelardo Morell: In the Company of Monet and Constable is on view in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper in the Manton Research Center.

Abelardo Morell: In the Company of Monet and Constable is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the Troob Family Foundation.