Cass Bird

Cass Bird is an influential photographer and director working in portraiture and fashion whose images are quickly recognizable for their exuberant energy. Whether shooting Hollywood stars, high-fashion supermodels, friends, or her own two kids, her portraits hold an emotional immediacy and result from a playful collaboration between artist and subject.

"I don’t think there is anyone working right now in photography who has the same ease with their subjects, the same youthful, seductive energy, the same mix of spontaneity and aesthetic rigor."

–Sally Singer, from the foreword to Rewilding

Bird’s personal projects maintain a balance of carefree energy and empathetic sensitivity. Her subjects move fluidly and confidently between gender expressions and coolly create alternatives to the structures of societal norms. Her work poignantly illustrates the convergence of alternative lifestyles with accepted conceptions of motherhood, nurturing, and family. For her most recent monograph Rewilding (Damiani, 2012), Bird travelled with a small group of models and collaborators to Sassafrass, Tennessee, a lush artists’ community in an idyllic, naturalistic setting. In the images, Bird’s subjects race barefoot across open fields, wrestle in the rain, and ignite bonfires while reclaiming and challenging traditional symbols of femininity such as tutus, rollers, and pigtails. Cass Bird was raised in Los Angeles before receiving a BA from Smith College. Now based in Brooklyn, Bird is a regular contributor to T Magazine, The New Yorker, Fader, and Paper. She has realized advertising campaigns for a variety of clients including Levi’s, Converse, Nike, and Wrangler. Her work has been shown in the Art + Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers and at Deitch Projects, and is in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum.