Boston-based photographer Abelardo Morell has a longstanding tradition of giving Lisa, his wife of over 40 years, a bouquet of flowers for her birthday. In February 2014, he decided to give her something more permanent. “I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I can take a picture instead?’ For one thing, it would last longer…”
This initial image was the seed from which bloomed an extraordinary photographic series of intricate and striking bouquet compositions. Flowers for Lisa is subtitled as a “delirium of photographic invention”, a fitting description for this imaginative compilation of works. Using and switching between a variety of techniques, disciplines and methods, such as cliché verre, printmaking and painting, Morell presents flowers in ways which are anything but ordinary. “Precisely because flowers are such a conventional subject, I felt a strong desire to describe them in new, inventive ways,” Morell says in a recorded conversation in the book.
