Pelle Cass is an artist who has succeeded in standing out on account of his ability to combine photography with technology in order to create realistic yet illusory photographic works. Cass has been taking photographs since he was a child. At first, he possessed a Kodak Brownie box and later he moved on to a reflex Yashica when he turned twelve. He studied art in Boston, in Mexico and in Minneapolis. His works have been exhibited at the Fogg Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Polaroid Collection, the DeCordova Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, among a whole host of other places.

One of his first series, undertaken with the ‘level’ technique, was Selected People. Cass combined different street scenes – all taken throughout one single day – from which he would be able to extrapolate his iconic compositions and thus choreograph pedestrian traffic. The result was a collection of magnificent shots dominated by such a rapturous coincidence. The idea of using sports events as a canvas came later.

Cass became famous when he created a series of images which have sport and athletes as the main protagonists. In these images he explored the dynamism and the beauty of movement. By using technology, he superimposed hundreds of photographs taken in sequence, creating images which appear to capture an entire performance into one single snapshot. The result was an exceptionally striking portrait of vivacity and energy. Crowded Fields, the most representative series, portrayed the playing fields of different disciplines. In this series, Cass was able to encapsulate, in every single image, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the extreme effort spent and the passion within each and every event. In spite of any digital manipulating, each athlete is in his or her initial position in the photograph. Perched upon his tripod, Cass takes hundreds of photos at all the sports events that he attends and then, what he does is “simply” choreograph a collage with a sequence of harmonious movements.

Cass has also worked with fashion houses like Valentino, Jacquemus, Burberry and publications such as The New York Times Magazine and Antidote Magazine. The projects that he has undertaken with Jacquemus and Valentino were both shot in Paris and just like with the other series, these too recorded action in a space of time and compressed it into only one photograph. This is how he was able to depict a continual disorientating action which would evoke something halfway between pleasure and astonishment.

In among his myriad shots, Cass succeeds in finding an equilibrium between chaos and composition. The attention he pays to movement, to dynamism and to the beauty of action has transformed him into an artist who is recognised and appreciated the whole world over. His art is a form of invitation to reflect upon time: “it’s only all about the nature of time, the way that things occur. You do not notice them. If you notice them they will appear to accumulate.”