Photographer Richard Mosse opens debut retrospective
From Friday, Bologna’s Fondazione MAST gallery will host Mosse’s documentary work, which has taken him everywhere from the Amazon Rainforest to the Gaza Strip and Greece’s Moria refugee camp.
Today, Bologna’s Fondazione MAST gallery announced the first retrospective of Irish artist Richard Mosse, Displaced. With 77 large format photographs on show, the exhibition presents a wide selection of work that’s seen him travel far and wide throughout the years – with his trusty, now-discontinued Kodak Aerochrome camera always in hand.
Often exploring the boundaries between concept and documentary, the 41-year old’s photography deals with migration, conflict and climate change. In the early 2000s, he visited Bosnia, Kosovo, the Gaza Strip and the border between Mexico and the United States, documenting the aftermath of war zones. Mosse’s magic doesn’t come from the presentation conflict or battle, but rather the destruction, defeat and collapse of systems in the wake of chaos.
From 2014 to 2018, Mosse’s work focused on mass migration and the tensions caused by borders, opening up conversations about compassion and rejection, the culture of welcome, and repatriation. Throughout this time, he visited refugee camps in places such as Lebanon, Turkey and Greece. The former is where he filmed 2017’s Grid (Moria), for which Mosse went inside the Greek Moria refugee camp, which is known for its particularly poor living conditions. Using striking infrared thermography, the video in the exhibition will be composed of 16 screens looping the same clip at different intervals.
Most recently, between 2018 and 2019, Mosse traveled to the South American rainforest, shifting his lens between macro and micro for a rounded documentation of human conflict with nature. With the Amazon Rainforest under threat, he presents a sobering visualisation of climate change and the impact of human intervention. Likewise, Tristes Tropiques documents the destruction of ecosystems using satellite technology.
Displaced opens this Friday until 19th September.
