Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Reading #3: Jorg Colberg Interviews Richard Mosse

I've never looked at Richard Mosse's work before, and upon receiving the reading, I did a preliminary look at Infra, at first trying to understand what the pictures referred to out of context. It appeared to me that he was depicting a military force in some alien, pink world, which obvious stemmed from somewhere in Africa. I did not immediately pick up that there was something more serious going on, in that there was no direct sci-fi styling, but it was actually the use of military infared film. Turning the technology back on itself, it exposes the effects of war in the Congo. It is hard to consider this photojournalism anymore due to how stark this pink backdrop becomes, it appears inaccurate, but really it is exposing hidden colors using techniques used in war to discover hidden enemies. It becomes less about the story being covered, and more about the aesthetic, recalling Claire Bishop's ideals.

Mosse strikes me as someone who knows his field well, and how to break rules to show a more accurate depiction than more visually neutral ways of showing something. He put the Congo in the context of how the military saw it.

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