Richard Mosse's Infrared Photography

This post contains one photograph with some graphic content, so if disfigured faces aren't really your thing, don't scroll down. 

Over the past 15 years, more than 40 different armed groups have fought across the Democratic Republic of Congo. This rebel war-stricken country reported 5.4 million deaths between 1998 and 2007, as well as 400,000 rapes in 2007; yet somehow, photographer Richard Mosse is able to create haunting beauty in a land ravaged by unspeakable tragedy. Mosse creates these magenta and cotton candy worlds by using discontinued military surveillance technology: a type of color infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome. Originally developed for camouflage detection, this aerial film registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, rendering the green landscape in vivid hues of lavender, crimson, and hot pink.

On his journeys in eastern Congo, Mosse photographed rebel groups fighting nomadically in a jungle war zone plagued by frequent ambushes, massacres, and systematic sexual violence - Mosse's photographs show the country in a different light. 

Click on the photos to enlarge them. 
For information on infrared photography, click here. 

POETRY BY the wonderful and talented Avra Juliani....

“Painting God”

I look for softness,

 Within,

Painted irises.

Embers ignited,

Inside,

Of someone,

Like a fire,

Inside of something bigger

Than itself.

Like mommies and daddies,

With children in pastel dresses,

And,

Pressed ties,

On Sunday mornings,

Trying to fill something inside of them,

Like yearning,

Or,

Mourning,

Inside of something bigger,

Than itself.

I look for softness,

 Within,

Painted irises.

That allows me,

To be,

Inside of something bigger,

Than myself

“Painted Lines”

The painted lines,

And jagged crosswalks,

When,

At fifteen,

Everything seems jagged anyways,

The neon agendas, each conveying surrealism to the naked eye,

The beholder,

The beheld,

And the painted lines that I crossed,

On jagged passageways,

While people stood behind picket fences,

Pruned lawns,

Mocking,

Behind an eternity of straightened paths.