Richard Mosse

I recently saw these photos taken by Richard Mosse and was struck dumb by the contrast of such a loud and festive color and the subject matter - wartorn Congo. Mosse used Aerochrome infrared film for these photos of rebels during wartime and the results of bright color (well, at least me personally) get you drawn into the photos first for their apparent beauty and then for their shocking imagery and subject matter.

"This Aerochrome infrared film was developed by the US military in the 1940s to detect camouflage and to reveal part of the spectrum of light the human eye cannot see. But where this technology was invented to detect enemy positions in the underbrush, Mosse uses it to make us call into question pictures we thought we understood. These are the images we take for granted from Congo: the ruthless militia commander, the rape victim, an unwitting peasant. But in Mosse's pictures, Congo's photographic clichés are represented in a counterpoint of electric pink, teal blue and lavender. By representing the conflict with an invisible spectrum of infrared light, he pushes us to see this tragedy in new ways."