Antenna

Richard Mosse is an award-winning Irish artist now based in New York, working primarily in photography and video. After earning his MFA in Photography from the Yale University School of Art, Mosse combined his passion for the world we live in with a keen aesthetic sense to develop his own artistic signature that is part documentary film, part contemporary art.

His first works, Infra (2010-2015) and The Enclave (2012-2013), gained widespread recognition through their unique coverage of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as depicted through the prism of Kodak Aerochrome 16mm film, a type of infrared film that reveals normally invisible elements—a deliberate artistic choice that allows the artist to go beyond the limits of language and perception.

Similar in scope and approach is Incoming (2014-2017) that looks at the migratory crisis in Europe. For this work, Mosse used a military-grade thermal imaging camera, a more modern, even—in the words of the artist himself—futuristic technology that can detect body heat from up to 30 km away, and produces the same kind of pictorial quality as his other works.

The immensity of the Amazon rainforest is hard to imagine. This isn’t surprising given that it stretches across nine countries. To help us better connect with his subject and to demonstrate the complexity of this global natural treasure, Mosse divides his shots into three different scales, each with its own clearly defined intention.

• The macro scale is filmed using a multispectral camera that simulates satellite imagery. This technique is indispensable for its ability to expose environmental damage and climate change.
  
  
• The human scale is used for its familiarity to viewers. Scenes were captured on 35mm black-and-white film using the codes of “Spaghetti Western” films. This choice seeks to engage Western viewers with well-known images, reminding them of a familiar culture and its destructive impact.
  
  
• The microscopic scale, filmed using ultraviolet light, highlights the organisms that live mere centimeters from the ground (plants, lichens, etc.). While it reveals what is hidden, it especially makes us more aware of what we risk losing altogether.

Beyond developing his piece on these three scales, Mosse uses a false colour palette that is integrated through multispectral and infrared technologies. True to the aesthetic for which he has become well-known, the Irish artist juxtaposes the ravages of deforestation against areas that are still intact. Here, living trees appear hot pink and stand in stark contrast to the dull rose of decimated logs, illustrating their gradual demise. The result is a compelling portrait that sounds the alarm about the urgency of the situation.