Documentary Photographer: Richard Mosse

Documentary War Photographer, Richard Mosse, in his collection of images, Infra, and installation, The Enclave, takes a provocative look at the violent conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an almost forgotten humanitarian disaster that has claimed the lives of a staggering 5.4 million people since 1998.

Mosse, who was recently awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize–Europe’s most prestigious photography award–has created surreal images of beauty that are also deeply unsettling. The effects of crimson, magenta and cyan that permeate the images was achieved by the use Kodak Aerochrome, an infrared film first developed in the 1940’s for the military as a way detecting camouflage. Essentially, infrared film sees the unseen, a clever metaphor that encapsulates Mosse’s work which explores the issue of conflict in the Congo not being communicated to the mass media.

In asthetisising war, Mosse has controversially challenged the conventions of war photography by juxtaposing human suffering and beauty. Rather than trivializing a sensitive subject, Mosse has drawn attention to the world’s most deadly conflict.

Excerpts from an essay about Infra written by Richard Mosse can be found here. –P.