National Geographic Interactive - 02.2020

(Chris Devlin) #1

THE BACKSTORY


IN SEARCH OF A BETTER BIRTHDAY GIFT, THIS PHOTOGRAPHER
CREATED WILDLY IMAGINATIVE—AND ENDURING—BOUQUETS.

INSTEAD OF GIVING his wife flowers
for her birthday, as he did most years,
contemporary photographer Abelardo
Morell decided to choose something
that would last longer. Say, a photo-
graph of flowers.
The Cuban-born, Boston-based
photographer started with a still life
of a mixed bouquet. He took a photo,
then rearranged the flowers and took
another photo. He repeated that 20
times, then layered the images together.
Still lifes of flowers are a classic
subject for photographers. But Morell
is well-known for another distinc-
tive photographic approach: camera
obscura, a technique that captures
inverted views projected through a
pinhole onto a surface in a darkened
room. So he saw this very different
pursuit, a project he called Flowers
for Lisa, as a chance to stretch his cre-
ativity as well as to devise gifts for his
wife, Lisa McElaney.
Morell also saw the flowers project

as a way to pay homage to his favorite
creative artists. He used flowers and
petals to craft surreal designs of people
and places, and to celebrate the work of
Claude Monet, Georges Braque —even
the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
Each image inspired another. As
Morell recounts it: “I kept thinking, if
I can make this, I can make one more.”
After four years, he ended the series
in 2017 with 76 images united by their
floral medium but branching apart
with wild offshoots of originality.
The bouquets turned to mulch long
ago, but the images live on in Flowers
for Lisa: A Delirium of Photographic
Invention, the 2018 book that chronicles
the project. In the book’s afterword,
McElaney describes the distinction
between her appreciation of the images
and Morell’s. “I see them as keepsakes,
proof positive that what connects us is
real,” she writes. “Abe treats them as
tools for tending the fields of love and
commitment.” —DANIEL STONE

PROOF


Morell named this image “After Hitchcock’s Vertigo”; the bouquet strongly resembles one in the
classic 1958 suspense movie.
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