Infra

Infra, Richard Mosse's first book, offers a radical rethinking of how to depict a conflict as complex and intractable as that of the ongoing war in the Democratic Repuhlic of Congo. Mosse photographs both the rich topography, inscribed with the traces of conflicting interests, as well as rebel groups of constantly shifting allegiances at war with the Congolese national army (itself a patchwork of recently integrated warlords and their militias).
For centuries, the Congo has repcatedly compelled and defied the Western imagination. Mosse brings to this suhject the use of a discontinued aerial surveillance film, a type of color infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome. The film, originallv developed for military reconnaissance, registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, rendering the green landscape in vivid hues of lavender, crimson, and hot pink.
The results offer a fevered inflation of the traditional reportage document, underlining the growing tension between art, fiction, and photojournalism. Mosse's work highlights the ineffable nature of current events in today's Congo. Infra initiates a dialogue with photography that begins as an intoxicating méditation on a broken genre, but ends as a haunting elegy for a vividly beautiful land touched by unspeakable tragedy.
Adam Hochschild, renowned author of The Mirror at Midnight : A South African Journey and King Leopold's Ghost : A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, contributes a capsule history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, beginning with its founding as a privately held colony by King Leopold II of Belgium through to the fragile and incomplete peace of the mort recent years, highlighting the systematic corruption and violence that has characterized the last decade of this embattled landscape.