Richard Mosse: Infra

Richard Mosse, Simon Norfolk, Emily Speed
30 March 2012 to 10 June 2012
Free

Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool is showing the UK premier of Richard Mosse’s Infra, alongside a seminal project by photographer Simon Norfolk, from 30 March to 10 June 2012. The gallery launches a new Wall Work commission by artist Emily Speed on the same date.

Richard Mosse’s Infra project uses obsolete military surveillance technology, a type of infrared colour film called Kodak Aerochrome, to investigate ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Originally created to detect targets for aerial bombing, Kodak Aerochrome film registered a spectrum of light beyond what the human eye can see, rendering foliage in vivid hues of lavender, crimson and hot pink.

On his journeys in eastern Congo between 2010-11, Mosse photographed rebel groups constantly switching allegiances, fighting nomadically in a jungle war zone plagued by frequent ambushes, massacres, and systematic sexual violence. These narratives urgently need telling but cannot be easily described.

Infra offers a radical rethinking of how to depict a conflict as complex as that of the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The images initiate a dialogue with photography that begins as a meditation on a broken documentary genre, but ends as an elegy for a land touched by tragedy.

Richard Mosse was born in Ireland in 1980. He currently lives and works in New York.

He is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Redeye, Chittenden Horley, Hyde Park House Business Centre, Cartwright Street, Hyde, SK14 4EH, UK
© 2010–2024 Redeye The Photography Network