INFRA – RICHARD MOSSE

This summer’s exhibition in Långban’s mining and cultural village shows colorful photographs from a war-torn Congo, where the struggle over who should control the country’s natural resources continues to claim millions of human lives.

Richard Mosse depicts this beautiful African country in a new and slightly different way to how we are used to seeing images from war. The images in the exhibition Infra are on the borderland between documentary photography and art photography, where shock pink, turquoise and violet tones dominate.

It is a depiction of the Congo-Kinshasa of the Civil War in whose core undoubtedly the struggle for natural resources lies. Whether it is forest, rubber, oil or minerals. Conflict minerals have become a collective name for the minerals extracted in conflict-affected areas or under difficult working conditions. The exhibition uniquely shows a part of the world where a rich supply of natural resources and minerals has become more of a curse.

Richard Mosse portrays the tragedy but also the beauty by using an unconventional tool – the Kodak Aerochrome film, a special color film that was once produced for military reconnaissance missions. It detects infrared light and thus makes visible what the human eye cannot see. The beautiful green landscape and dense rainforest are transformed into shock-pink, turquoise and violet tones. The result is a feverish, dreamlike depiction of a country plagued by war and adversity.

About the photographer Richard Mosse

The award-winning photographer Richard Mosse was born in Ireland in 1980, but now lives in New York and Berlin. He was educated at the Yale School of Arts, New Haven and Goldsmiths College, London. He has worked as a war photographer, followed the refugee crisis in the 2010s and published several acclaimed books and reportage series from the places where he worked. He often depicts human and biological suffering from new perspectives and with advanced techniques. The new or for him unfamiliar technology becomes a starting point for the question of how or what story is possible to tell with it. The installation ”The Enclave” is a parallel work within the theme, the same infrared technology was used and the work represented Ireland at the Venice Art Biennale in 2013.