He was five minutes late and running. There was no dirt on Richard Mosse. We both ate a sandwich facing each other. I was ravenous. It hadn’t entered my mind that this could be one of the most impactful, early 21^st Century photographer’s living today.

He has caused a stir and a revolution. He has offended, he has offered absolutely no agenda, and he has managed to skip and smile his way out of disaster. His work reeks of audacity, blasts above tenaciousness, and doesn’t make anyone comfortable. Mosse has learned the rules, perfected them, and has broken them. He smiles at me. It’s okay. We keep eating our sandwiches.

He kept asking me about fashion, and in fact, “Is PhotoSynth a Fashion Blog?” Not really. “So, do you like fashion?” I wrinkled my nose and looked out the window. I guess, I thought. It depends on my mood. “So, what is a Fashion Film?” I felt like I had been meeting a friend for lunch that I had not seen in a very long time. It was strange. Was there really no dirt on Richard Mosse? It must have been in the particles.

I hounded Mosse while he was still in the Congo. Later, I was to read that he had to power his laptops by carrying generators and gasoline while out in the jungle. Which meant that when I emailed him back in July, his prompt reply was nothing short of laborious. I never expected to get a reply from him so fast, or a reply at all. But, why not? After a few emails were exchanged, he convinced me not to feature Infra and wait until his book was released. Instead I featured Mosse’s “Airside” back in July.

Time wore on. The sandwiches disappeared. I had to laugh to myself. Mosse has the uncanny ability of asking me more about myself and my mission, than I, him. I understood right away. It’s only because he’s told the story a million times-and afterall, this was lunch time. Mosse left it up to me to make up my own mind. And these are the decisions I have made about the journey, the work, the impact, and the audacity involved.

FACT: 400,000 Rapes in one year in the Congo. 5.4 Million deaths between 1998 and 2007.  Over the past 15 years, more than 40 armed groups have fought across a country the size of western Europe. 

Mosse’s work does not milk this statistic or bring it home. There’s no agenda. If you are looking for a good guy vs. bad guy happy ending, it’s not here. What you do see are the efforts made and a technique revolutionized. A soulful removal from the story and the injustices at hand, are necessary and required. The bravado that one can discern from this monumental journey is simply not there. Yet, the eyes cannot help but witness a growth and hope in Mosse’s mission. And it hides nothing. There is a happy joylessness that is negotiated between Mosse and his subjects. What I find riveting, refreshing, and offensive is exactly what draws me to the work and the technique. It is alien, it is brave, and it is at once, frighteningly truthful.

INGREDIENTS:

Discontinued Aerochrome Infrared film stock used for military reconnaissance

Generator + Gasoline = Power for laptop and hardrives.

Repurposed Red One video camera + Removed optical low-pass filter from digital sensor = Produces infrared light

Block Visible spectrum (Red, Green, Blue) + Place opaque black filter (too thick to see through) over the lens = Reads monochrome, save for ghostly hues and sinister dark skies.

Crossing front lines into rebel territory

A 50% chance of it working out

A New and Difficult Philosophy:

Photography can only go so far when it comes to feeling pain. Ultimately, the photographer cannot feel anyone’s pain with his lens. The photographer can only make the world keenly aware. The pain is up to us. Even if the lens or the photographer does feel that pain, it’s too late. The work catapults itself towards the realms of removal. A photographer’s interpretation and feelings are not really considered until he’s back on the plane, sipping a jack and coke, and wondering just what kind of surreal bubble he’s locked himself into.

When I viewed Infra for the first time over the summer, I was forced to look at things differently. This is how I mark the impact of a photographer’s work on history and how the photographer will make an impact on the future of this young medium. When you are forced to shift your concepts, your perspective, and your feelings while looking at the work, when it challenges you through the view finder of your everyday “vision” that is when photography marks you. I find this to be a very rare occurrence amongst the millions of photographs and submissions that come across my vision everyday.

Infra, whether Mosse chooses to acknowledge it or not, has caused a stir and has offended, precisely because this series has emotionally removed itself from the core of many of the world’s problems—save for skimming the surface of conflicts in the Congo. You cannot “bible-thump” your way into making an audience aware of a single society’s mistakes inflicted on its own people. But you can paint it lightly and gently, so as to ease awareness onto the rest of the world. And with this unbearable lightness of being, the problems make themselves pristinely aware without pandering down to an already guilt-ridden westerner.

We notice that Mosse teeters on the offensive by “packaging” his work, even down to the cover of his book, with a fun nonchalance. He’s notifying us that there’s another form of documentary photography that simply teases our emotions, and forces us to make up our own minds. His work sheds a tear for no one, and in that process it makes everyone aware that there’s a pink elephant standing in the room (infrared?)— and you don’t have to feel guilty about it. It slowly fascinates, the pretty colors, and either your consciousness can choose to see the problems that are glaringly clear, or you can simply—ignore them.

Infra (Collectors Edition) is available at Aperture

Richard Mosse’s work is on view at Jack Shainman Gallery

Posted by Ana Roman for PhotoSynth