Richard Mosse

For the last three years, Richard Mosse (born 1980) has photographed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a region in which a long-standing power vacuum has resulted in a horrifying cycle of violence. The Enclave is the culmination of Mosse’s recent efforts to radically rethink traditional representations of conflict photography, drawing on artistic and documentary strategies in equal measure. Shooting with both still and 16 mm cameras, he uses a discontinued military surveillance film, which registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light. Mosse has captured the landscape in disorienting psychedelic hues of scarlet, lavender, cobalt and puce, creating images that are deceptively seductive and alluring. Ultimately, however, the resulting images and film map the otherwise invisible edges of violence, chaos and incommunicable horror of isolated, jungle war zones. At the heart of the project, as Mosse states, is his exploration of the contradictions and limits of art’s ability “to represent narratives so painful that they exist beyond language--and photography’s capacity to document specific tragedies and communicate them to the world.” The Enclave has been printed in a total of 1,000 copies, 250 of which have been released as part of a limited-edition boxed set. The boxed set includes a 45 rpm record with sound and music design by Ben Frost; a poster featuring an image by Richard Mosse (depicted at left) and a transcription from the film; and a signed and numbered copy of the book, released to coincide with an installation of the work at the Venice Biennale.

For the last three years, Richard Mosse (born 1980) has photographed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a region in which a long-standing power vacuum has resulted in a horrifying cycle of violence. The Enclave is the culmination of Mosse’s recent efforts to radically rethink traditional representations of conflict photography, drawing on artistic and documentary strategies in equal measure. Shooting with both still and 16 mm cameras, he uses a discontinued military surveillance film, which registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light. Mosse has captured the landscape in disorienting psychedelic hues of scarlet, lavender, cobalt and puce, creating images that are deceptively seductive and alluring. Ultimately, however, the resulting images and film map the otherwise invisible edges of violence, chaos and incommunicable horror of isolated, jungle war zones. At the heart of the project, as Mosse states, is his exploration of the contradictions and limits of art’s ability “to represent narratives so painful that they exist beyond language--and photography’s capacity to document specific tragedies and communicate them to the world.” The Enclave has been printed in a total of 1,000 copies, 250 of which have been released as part of a limited-edition boxed set. The boxed set includes a 45 rpm record with sound and music design by Ben Frost; a poster featuring an image by Richard Mosse (depicted at left) and a transcription from the film; and a signed and numbered copy of the book, released to coincide with an installation of the work at the Venice Biennale.

Infra, Richard Mosse’s first book, offers a radical rethinking of how to depict a conflict as complex and intractable as that of the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mosse photographs both the rich topography, inscribed with the traces of conflicting interests, as well as rebel groups of constantly shifting allegiances at war with the Congolese national army (itself a patchwork of recently integrated warlords and their militias). For centuries, the Congo has repeatedly compelled and defied the western imagination. Mosse brings to this subject the use of a discontinued aerial surveillance film, a type of color infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome. The film, originally developed for military reconnaissance, registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, rendering the green landscape in vivid hues of lavender, crimson and hot pink. The results offer a fevered inflation of the traditional reportage document, underlining the growing tension between art, fiction and photojournalism. Mosse’s work highlights the ineffable nature of current events in today’s Congo. Infra initiates a dialogue with photography that begins as an intoxicating meditation on a broken genre, but ends as a haunting elegy for a vividly beautiful land touched by unspeakable tragedy.
Following studies at the London Consortium and Goldsmiths College in London, Richard Mosse (born 1980) graduated from the Yale School of Art. He was awarded the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in 2008 and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. His work has been featured on the pages of Aperture, Artforum, Art in America, Frieze and Modern Painters.