See W.J.T Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992 and objections: Lev Manovich, ‘The Paradoxes of Digital Photography,’ Photography After Photography , Hubertus v. Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut, Florian, Rötzer (eds), G+B Arts, 1996, pp. 57-65. For simulacrum, cf. Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy’ in T he Logic of Sense, Mark Lester trans., London and New York: Continuum, 2004, pp. 291-320. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Framer Framed, New York: Routledge, 1992, cited in Judith Butler, Frames of War. When is Life Grievable? London and New York: Verso, 2010, p. 8. Richard Mosse’s work was first introduced to me last year; on hearing that he was to be exhibited at the Open Eye Gallery I was eager to go and experience it first hand. On show is a new body of work made in the Democratic Republic of Congo entitled Infra. Using the recently discontinued Kodak Aerochrome film, his photographs literally put a new light on the turbulent situation in Congo. Designed by the US military to detect camouflage and reveal part of the spectrum of light the human eye cannot see, the film converts infrared light into hues of lavender crimson and hot pink. Mosse’s first solo UK show, Infra runs alongside the archive exhibition by Simon Norfolk, For Most of it I Have No Words. Mosse next worked with the camera’s designer to develop a way to use it to shoot large panoramic images. He explains that the camera shoots in a kind of tunnel vision, “so it’s not as good at telling the story as a conventional video camera. It’s like trying to shoot a feature film through a telescope.” (He essentially did that for Incoming.) In his interview with Art Review, Mosse draws together the sometimes "entwined" history of Ireland and of the Congo, where peacekeeping troops have been sent since the sixties and where, in that same decade, occurred the greatest loss of Irish life. Mosse was still a teenager when the father of his best friend died with a bullet to the head while working with the UN in Congo.

Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ in Benjamin, Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt and trans. Harry Zohn, London: Harper Collins, 1992, pp. 245-255A few years ago we shared photographer Richard Mosse‘s unique infrared imagery that he had shot in The Democratic Republic of Congo for his series Infra. Taking advantage of an old type of Kodak film called Aerochrome, he infused new color into this war-torn and often forgotten part of the Earth. I find it a very hypocritical situation. Not because journalists and photographers would be just a gang of profiteers exploiting others’ poverty by turning it into attractive or impressive images and making piles of money, but because none of the profits that these images generate return to the people that deliver the raw material: the poor allowing themselves to be filmed. This makes the exploitation of filmed and photographed poverty a perfect double (analogy) for rubber, coltan or slave labour’. Els Roelandt, ‘Renzo Martens’ Episode 3: Analysis of a Film Process in Three Conversations’, A Prior Magazine No. 16, February 2008, www.aprior.org. In his extraordinary series of essays on Africa, The Shadow of the Sun, Ryszard Kapuciski reminds us that “The richness of every European language is a richness in ability to describe its own culture, represent its own world. When it ventures to do the same for another culture, however, it betrays its limitations, underdevelopment, semantic weakness.” See Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second. Stillness and the Moving Image, London: Reaktion Books 2004, pp. 123-143. Mulvey’s delay builds on Neorealist aesthetics.

One month ago, the renowned Irish, New York-based photographer Richard Mosse booked a last-minute flight to Lesbos. The Greek island, home to the notorious Moria refugee camp, had been hit by a snowstorm. Mosse had witnessed the squalid, overcrowded conditions at Moria a year prior, and the thought of Moria’s inhabitants braving snow and freezing temperatures compelled him to return and document the refugee crisis there again. Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott, London and New York: Verso, 2009, pp. 83-105; p. 96 Boxed set. Edition of 250 copies. Includes a vinyl record with sound and music, designed by Ben Frost; a poster featuring an image by Mosse; a transcription from the film; and a signed-and-numbered copy of the book. On the wall text before you enter the exhibitionis a cryptic quote from Mosse, that he is “concerned less with the conscience than with the consciousness”. Gallery 1 contains a selection of large prints depicting the landscapes of Eastern Congo. Bursting with those hues of crimson and pink; though re-contextualising, they render us, the viewer, fully conscious of the situation Mosse is depicting. These evocative images demand your full and prolonged fixation to their delicate balance between the real and the surreal. The hues give these landscape a blood soaked appearance, a memorial to the lives lost within those unimaginably fraught battles.The Enclave: A Powerful Documentary on The Congo Shot Entirely on Infrared Film". petapixel.com. 2 June 2013 . Retrieved 13 April 2021.

Mosse characterizes his work "as not a reaction against journalism, but rather an artist working in places [where] journalists are working." 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.Tipton, Gemma. "Richard Mosse: 'The idea of the artist going it alone is bogus' ". The Irish Times . Retrieved 22 April 2022. In this video for leading contemporary art magazine Frieze, Mosse introduces his latest work and touches on the dissonance of rendering aesthetically sublime such scenes of turmoil. 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.