Richard Mosse (Irish, b. 1980)
Crepori River, Pará, 2020
Archival pigment prints 62 x 59 in. (each); 62 x 177 in. (overall)
Richard Mosse’s work straddles the border between documentary photography and contemporary art. This triptych depicts the effects of illegal gold mining along the banks of the Crepori River in the Brazilian state of Pará. The extraction process strips the land of its resources, destroying forests and poisoning water supplies with toxic mercury that contaminates the ecosystem on which both Indigenous and wildlife populations depend. The work is part of Mosse’s large-scale photographic series, Tristes Tropiques, exposing environmental destruction in northern Brazil.
Employing geographic information system (GIS) technology, Mosse used drones to capture thousands of multispectral aerial images that he weaves together to create graphic maps highlighting areas of environmental degradation. Multispectral imaging is used by Brazilian agribusiness and extractive industries to exploit the environment more profitably, and by scientific groups to detect deforestation and ecological damage. As an artist, Mosse deploys this technology creating images that display a disarming, gestural aesthetic force while revealing complex ecological narratives, the effects of which can be difficult to perceive closer to the ground. Both beautiful and shocking, the works portray a highly vulnerable biome, showing signs of life but also documenting forest die-back, tipping points, and ecocide.
Mosse represented Ireland at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and has been awarded the Prix Pictet (2018), the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2014), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011) among others. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions including at Fondazione MAST, Bologna (2021); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2019); the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2019); and the Barbican Art Gallery, London (2017).
More information on Richard Mosse can be found here:
https://jackshainman.com/artists/richard_mosse
https://www.wallpaper.com/art/richard-mosse-photography-retrospective-fondazione-mast-bologna
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/blood-gold-in-the-brazilian-rain-forest