Irish photographer Richard Mosse is known for his restraining and highly aestheticised views of sites associated with violence and fear, such as his 2008 depictions of the war in Iraq, and his large-scale photographs of aeroplane crash sites. For his new series, Infra, Mosse used Kodak Aerochrome - an infra-red film designed in the 1940s to assist the U.S. military in detecting camouflage - to photograph the people and landscape of the Eastern Congo. The film reveals a spectrum of light beyond what the human eye can perceive, turning the lush, green landscape of the Congo into a bubblegum pink. The photographs investigate the severe circumstances within which the people of the Eastern Congo live and draw our attention to the complex social and political dynamics of this region of the world.
Richard Mosse: Falk Visiting Artist, 14/01/2012 - 15/04/2012, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. weatherspoon.uncg.edu
Aesthetica in Print
If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The December/January issue of Aesthetica offers a diverse range of features from The Way We Live Now, which is on at the Design Museum, London, to Anselm Kiefer opening at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to a look at Danser Sa Vie at Pompidou Centre, which examines the place dance holds in art history. Plus it comes with its very own DVD of short films from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.
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Captions:
1. Richard Mosse, Taking Tiger Mountain (Infra series), 2011, digital c-print, 72 x 90 in., Private collection. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
2. Richard Mosse, Better Than the Real Thing (Infra series)", 2011, digital c-print, 48 x 60 in., Private collection, Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
3. Richard Mosse, Ruby Tuesday (Infra series), 2011, digital c-print, 48 x 60 in. Private collection, Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
4. Richard Mosse, General Février, North Kivu, Eastern Congo (Infra series), 2010, Cibachrome print, Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
