We have been stealing moments here at the office to thumb through the revelatory book Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door, a catalogue accompanying an exhibition of the photographer’s work that opens tomorrow at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The exhibition, and the book, include beautiful, disorienting images that explore the sensory properties of books, the American landscape, stop-motion studies, and the camera obscura, among other explorations and representations.  It is inviting, compelling work.  As curator and editor Elizabeth Siegel writes in an essay in the book, “we want to accompany Morell and his camera when he grabs our sleeve and says, in the works of E.E. Cummings, ‘listen;there’s a hell / of a good universe next door;let’s go.’”

If you can go, by all means: go.  And then write and tell us about it.

Whether or not you can get to the Art Institute for this marvelous exhibition, check out this video of Abelardo Morell.

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