Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962.  Morell received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and his MFA from The Yale University School of Art. He has received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College in 1997 and from Lesley University in 2014.  He was professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston from 1983 to 2010.

His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1998) by Dutton Children’s Books,  A Camera in a Room (1995) by Smithsonian Press,  A Book of Books (2002) by Bulfinch Press, Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press, Abelardo Morell (2005) by Phaidon Press, The Universe Next Door (2013) by The Art Institute of Chicago, Tent-Camera (2018) by Nazraeli Press, and Flowers for Lisa (2018) by Abrams Books.

He has received a number of awards and grants, which include a Guggenheim fellowship in 1994 and an Infinity Award in Art from ICP in 2011. In November 2017, he received a Lucie Award for achievement in fine art. His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, The Chicago Art Institute, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Houston Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum and several other museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty in Los Angeles, and The High Museum in Atlanta closed in May 2014 after a year of travel. His Tent-Camera work made in U.S. National Parks was included in the travelling exhibition Ansel Adams in Our Time at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville. Most recently, in the fall of 2024 a selection of his Tent-Camera work made in England and France was shown at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.