Modern sports cameras can freeze every movement with extraordinary clarity. Yet reports suggest photographers are deliberately moving away from that precision, using vintage cameras, infrared imaging, prismatic filters and film to create images with texture and uncertainty.
Pernet’s television-based work, reportedly shared by Michael Olise, offers a different kind of access. The screen is not a disadvantage; it becomes part of the composition. Distance, glare and pixels help turn a broadcast moment into something personal.
A flat-bed scanner can transform Harry Kane’s celebration into a stretched, fractured image. The technique records movement across time rather than trapping one instant, making the player appear to bend through the frame.
A later treatment of Kylian Mbappé, described as more deliberately mirrored, takes that idea further. The footballer remains recognisable, but the image refuses to behave like a conventional action photograph.
That approach has roots in older sports photography, where slit-scanning and other mechanical processes turned speed into distortion. The difference now is that these experiments can travel instantly through television, social media and supporters’ own screens.
That is the debate. A traditional match photograph promises evidence: who jumped, who scored, who celebrated. Experimental work offers something else-the feeling of watching an iconic moment become unstable in memory.
The strongest images may do both. They preserve the identity of the player and occasion while revealing the emotion, noise and distance surrounding it.
As the next World Cup fixtures produce another sequence of celebrations and decisive moments, the visual story will extend beyond the stadium. The question may not only be who captured the moment, but who found a new way to see it.