Talk Art’s Rob Diament explores the creative realm of Pelle Cass, whose “still time-lapse” photography transcends traditional bounds, weaving multiple moments into single expressive frames. This interview unveils the intricate dance between time, space, and human interaction captured through his lens.
Rob Diament:
I know that one of your series that seems to have captured a lot of people’s imagination has been your series of sports photography and collage in a way. Can you speak a bit about how that body of work began?”
pelle cass:
“The series that I did using the same technique was called ‘Selected People,’ and that was people on the street moving around and doing things and combined into in the same way that the sports pictures are, but that was more serene and kind of quiet kind of pictures. And I noticed that when a kid ran through or when something happened, somebody moved their bodies, that I noticed and it was exciting, and I thought how can I get more action in the pictures. I live in Boston, which has a huge number of universities, which all have multiple sports teams, and I think I just figured I could go; nobody would care. I would just go to one of the games and start taking pictures, and that’s kind of how it started. I think I was walking by Harvard Stadium when I actually said I’ll try it. I just put my camera on a ledge, set a timer, and it went off every second. And that was the first one I did and they worked so well, I was off.”
Rob Diament:
“So, people who haven’t seen your work before, the term that I’ve seen being used to sort of tag it is ‘still time-lapse.’ And that’s because the images, the final images which you spend hours editing, consist of sometimes maybe a hundred different bodies or more, even all in different moments of time. And I’m loving that idea of time lapse. So when you actually set up the camera, are you actually present or do you just leave the camera there?”
pelle cass:
“No, I definitely act a little more like a photographer, where I take more pictures when something interesting is happening and fewer pictures when nothing is happening. So it doesn’t suit me to just have it go off. But my camera will take 20 pictures per second. So if somebody throws a ball, then I’ll take the 20 pictures
Probably, the cameras and computers are big enough where I could just leave it on 20 frames per second forever, and that would work too. But it’d be much to go through. It would be hard and as it is, I might have 5,000 images for a game.”
Rob Diament:
“So from one sports game, you gather 5,000 separate images?”
pelle cass:
“Yeah, and then I made the picture from that. And then the other thing that’s very important to me is that everything stays in the same place. Anything that you see next to each other was in time next to each other, so it’s not really made-up, the way collages are. It’s still factual. It’s still stuck to the truth of the scene and the truth of whatever happened.”
Rob Diament:
“Yeah, because I’m friends with an artist in London called Johnsters Occur, who’s really well known for his collage work,…”
Rob Diament:
“… Another thing I really love about the photographs is this: there’s a poem by William Blake that says something like ‘the whole world in a grain of sand,’ and there’s something in your photographs where it’s almost like all in one image. It’s like the whole universe. Is that something you thought about?”
pelle cass:
“… Yeah, I like aerial views, I like maps, and I kind of like data where you look at the thing and you see everything all at once…”
pelle cass:
“… there’s more happening in the centre because there was more happening in the centre. And in some diving pictures I’ve done, they do make this peculiar shape in the air that kind of looks like a wave because they’re spinning. So, I find these shapes that bodies describe in the air that I was not able to perceive. Maybe divers know it looks like that, but I don’t think so. There’s some new information I’ve found that people make shapes and movement creates shapes that you can’t see with your eye.”
Rob Diament:
“And yeah, that’s so interesting about shapes, isn’t it? And also, for me, it’s about time though that was kind of my point about the grain of sand…”
pelle cass:
“… And also about the grain of that, the same feeling I have is that you’re a speck in space. I really strongly feel, just as a human being, that you’re a speck in time that you can’t remember visual information…”
Rob Diament: I also feel like the approach to composition is very painterly because I heard that you spend up to 40 hours in Photoshop creating the images?
pelle cass: Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Diament: So, all these thousands and thousands of photographs—you meticulously bring them together into one new image. But I feel like even though it’s through a digital process, it feels like you’re a painter, really?
pelle cass: No, I feel that way, and as I said before, being dissatisfied with photography, I always felt more like—it’s a cliché—but I want to make something rather than just snap the shutter.
Rob Diament: Yeah.
pelle cass: I made things in the studio because I had this feeling that… I’m not young. But even back then I felt like the pictures generation… it’s been photographed too much. But I don’t have anything new to say with a still photo. So I want to add something or I want to make something that couldn’t exist without me having made it, and photograph it, because photography, it’s still kind of a miracle. It’s still amazing. It can record these things that like Anne, Hardy’s, never existed for a little while and then will never exist again. So, I always love that about photography but the subject matter? I don’t want to go to the pyramids and take pictures, I’d like to go to the pyramids but I want to take pictures. And that’s kind of the pictures generation insight.
Rob Diament: All right.
Rob Diament: And how do you know when an image is finished, is it like a gut thing or—
pelle cass: Yeah, it’s a gut thing and it’s also like a painter when I start ruining it. When it starts looking worse, then I say, it must be done. And luckily, the way I work, it is possible for me to go too far and not have saved it and actually ruin it, like a painter, but mostly it’s like a computer person. I can always go back to the state that worked. But yeah, when I start adding too much stuff and it starts looking worse, that’s when I know. Also, it’s not always true. It just feels like it did what? I get some feeling out of it and then I know it’s done. And usually until that point, it was just a mess and it made me sick and I wished I was doing anything else and it was terrible. And then it starts to work and then I know, so…
Rob Diament: Have you ever had any nightmares where you’ve lost a file or had problems or something?
pelle cass: I worry about it all the time because all my work is backed up, but I’m kind of disorganized so it’s not perfectly backed up, so it’s a constant waking nightmare. But I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed about it while I was asleep.
Rob Diament: How do you feel about AI being used in Art?
pelle cass: I have that feeling of not understanding it and not really peaking my interest, but I think it’s basically good as another tool and etc, that kind of thing. And what’s not interesting to me is a lot of AI art that I’ve seen. It looks like.like clipart. So if it’s a fantasy world and one that you never seen before, looks like the corniest amazing fantasy world you could imagine. It looks like video game art. I think they’re terrific artists. They have wonderful imaginations, but they look like video games and they look like cliched video games. And most AI art looks like that somehow. If the algorithm makes a consensus, it comes out corny. Every single one, the ones that don’t look corny are the ones either the prompts or the algorithm has gotten confused and they do it completely wrong and there’s nothing I love more than when it’s completely wrong. It misunderstands what a human is and how fingers look. That’s the stuff I love.
Rob Diament: Is it hard being an artist in the way that you work? If you’re walking down the street, are you thinking I could make that into a photograph? Are you constantly alert to creativity?
pelle cass: Yeah, I mean I think when I first started, it was worse. Because I was doing street photography, and for me being a timid soul. I really didn’t like going out on the street and taking pictures and I had to work myself up to it.
pelle cass: Plant myself here, that would make a good picture. So I did go through that. I don’t know. I feel like it’s more subjective and I’m making and finding the things that I want and I don’t really have to.
pelle cass: Go out and be bold and find them myself. So it’s much easier. So I don’t walk around and say, I wish I could photograph that as much. So I certainly did, it was unpleasant. And the feeling of making myself go out an: do it. It was very hard.
Rob Diament: The reason I asked is because I feel in the work, you feel this urgency? They’re intense images and I can imagine that’s coming from an intense mind.
pelle cass: Yeah.
pelle cass: I don’t know, I didn’t get to confess anything here.
Rob Diament:. What about architecture as well? Is there something about the kind of the way that sports arenas look, like a Tennis Court
pelle cass: Yeah.
pelle cass: I usually photograph college sports which can be kind of big business, but mostly it’s the cheapest way they can do it and the stands are small and it’s not a big glamorous place. So I like that kind of architecture and it’s photographers have always liked chain link fences and fire hydrants and concrete walls. And I feel like a lot of these things are kind of photo vocabulary. I also think for me there’s a romance in those demarcations and lines on courts and fields because I’ve played a lot of sports. And there’s something almost romantic about these things that.
pelle cass: Enable the game to exist. You can’t have these games without those lines, and I think they’re sort of beautiful, so I.
pelle cass: Do feel that and I like the kind of rustic architecture and these things that are utilitarian. But at the same time, they’re panopticons again, they really are designed for the best view of this central action. And it makes them kind of interesting spaces to me.
Rob Diament: Another thing I know is that when I was growing up, I was really obsessed with the clothing that went with sports, more than the actual sport. So for me, I would be really into a cricket bat and the tape they would wrap around the handle. Do you know what I mean? The actual behind the objects and…
pelle cass: Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Diament: and the knee pads, and I don’t know. In your imagery, there’s often a uniform
Rob Diament: I was just saying the knee pads and the uniforms, if you like that, come with sports and in your work because you might be photographing swimmers or different sports people. They’re either on a team or there’s a particular type of swimming costume they’re wearing for speed. So it becomes this kind of uniform. But through that even though it all looks quite similar in a way, but the individuality of the players really stands out and I was wondering if you were interested in the uniforms visually.
pelle cass: Absolutely, yeah. No. I really like when I first started photographing, people with uniforms? I kind of didn’t like it because it made them all look the same. And then, I’d like to. I realized I liked it because it made them look all the same and…
Rob Diament:
pelle cass: maybe their faces were different. I liked it also because it would disguise the fact that they were all the same. So I might only have 22 players in a big team sport, football or something. And I might show a hundred or two hundred and they’d be repeated, but you couldn’t tell they were repeated because of the uniforms. So, I like both things that it individualized them. But then, maybe emphasize their faces. Also, it made you search for their faces. I also like that. It made me be, as you’re saying, more of a painter. So I can work with the two colors to make a composition in a way that when I photograph multicolored scenes where they’re not wearing uniforms, like, I have an unlimited palette, but.
pelle cass: maybe I only have two instances of maroon. I don’t have enough to work with but if it’s red and blue, then I can use that the way I want. So that’s big. And again, they also have a romance and I think I felt the same way before sneakers were a thing. I liked my sneakers. I look at them and it’s worn a little bit here from me walking on it, or I used to be fascinated with the peripheral things.
pelle cass: And all athletes. Are they like their bats or their rackets or those things are all a big deal. And I like them, too, and they’re humble ugly things. And in a lot of ways in a way, I like chain link and aluminum bleachers and…
Rob Diament: Yeah. Yeah…
pelle cass: things like that.
Rob Diament: I’ve always liked that idea of talisman as well and this idea that maybe the bat is some magical thing, you know what I mean? People invest into their things, I wouldn’t. When I was a kid, I used LA and I was really obsessed with point ballet shoes like that women would generally have and I used to really want them as an object. I found them to be really pleasing. Sculpturally it’s so strange. The stuff I’ve been remembering since looking at your work.
pelle cass: You just beat me with the talisman because I’m gonna have to use that because I never thought of that, I love that. The bats are wands. Or their talismans are.
Rob Diament: Yeah.
pelle cass: Balls are kind of magic. I mean, I’ve always liked them and it’s because they float. And if you’ve ever had the sensation of, you raise your arm with your holding a ball, you throw the ball and it goes precisely where you aimed it. I just love that feeling even if just a game of catch that you can make this object do this miracle and it makes a beautiful arc and it floats. It spins. It does but it’s talisman. You got me there? I like it.
