Crowded Fields

By Suzanne Révy

In his book The Nature of Photographs, Stephen Shore describes how time can be perceived in photography. He identifies three ways to capture time: “decisive,” where action is stopped in a fraction of a second, “extrusive,” where a long shutter can render movement and “still” which implies that the content of an image existed before and long after the shutter was released. Missing from this list is what might best be described as “compressed time.” In Crowded Fields, Pelle Cass manages the neat trick of compressing a one-to-two hour college sporting event into a single frame. A solo show of his work is currently on view at the Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s SOWA arts district through March 21, 2021. 

“Harvard Men’ Water Polo” 2019 by Pelle Cass from the series Crowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston.

“BU Field Hockey” 2019 by Pelle Cass from the series Crowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston.

“Futures Tennis in Brighton” 2018 by Pelle Cass, from the series Crowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston.

Collegiate sports is rarely the subject of fine art but in Crowded Fields, Pelle Cass distills the endurance of competitive athletics into dizzying compositions of figure and gesture which invite viewers into a whimsical realm. By making thousands of photographs during various sporting events, and then assembling the figures into a single image, Cass introduces a sense of play both on the field and in his pictures. In “Futures Tennis in Brighton” for example, there are only two players present, but as Cass writes, “The players did me the courtesy of frequently changing clothes during the course of the match which, at first glance, makes it seem that there are a few dozen different players.” The liveliness of this colorful composition is nicely matched by a sense of sportsmanship between the two players. These layered and complex compositions endow the pictures with a captivating “Where’s Waldo?” kind of visual puzzle, imploring viewers to carefully track human interactions. 

“BU Terrier Invitational, Day One” 2018 by Pelle Cass, from the series Crowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery.

“MIT vs. Williams Pole Vault” 2019 by Pelle Cass, from the series Crowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston.

In addition to compressing time in wider fields, Cass moves in for a closer look on three vertically formatted pictures that reveal how the human figure moves through space from a diving platform or over the pole vault. It brings Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of human and animal movement to mind, and in fact, he writes, “I want my work to be like Muybridge or Edgerton’s – showing a new world previously invisible to the eye, visible only with a camera.” 

“Futures Friday Court 4, Cloudy (Balls) 2018/2020 by Pelle Cass, from the series Uncrowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston.

“Thalia Beach, Friday No. 2” 2019/2021 by Pelle Cass from the series Uncrowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston.

Additionally, Cass experiments with imagery absent the players in a complementary body of work called Uncrowded Fields. In these images, he omits the athletes, leaving only the tennis or basketballs bouncing across the court. In another example, Cass removed surfers from the waves on a California beach, allowing their boards to dance and weave unencumbered by figures through the waves. Cass’ inventive imagery is as much a philosophical treatise on our concepts of time as it is an absorbing game in visual attention.  But these days, with sporting events being played in empty stadiums and so many of us pining for group interactions as spectators or weekend warriors, it may be a perfect metaphor for our times. 

(Featured Image) “Women’s Water Polo at Harvard” 2018 by Pelle Cass from the series Crowded Fields, courtesy of the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston.

For more information: https://www.abigailogilvy.com