Richard Mosse

Richard Mosse (born 1980) is an Irish conceptual documentary photographer, living in New York City and Ireland.

Mosse was born in Kilkenny, Ireland.

He received a first class BA in English literature from King's College London in 2001, an MRes in cultural studies from the London Consortium in 2003, a postgraduate diploma in fine art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2005 and a photography MFA from Yale School of Art in 2008.

he lives and works in New York City and Ireland.

He has worked in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia.

Mosse made photographs of the war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo using colour infrared film with which he intended to create a new perspective on conflict.

Kodak Aerochrome is a false-color infrared film originally intended for aerial vegetation surveys and for military reconnaissance, such as to identify camouflaged targets.

It registers light that is invisible to humans, rendering the grass and trees and soldiers' uniforms in vivid hues of lavender, crimson and hot pink.

He used this same film to make a documentary film entitled The Enclave, with cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost.

This work was published in three publications, exhibited in solo exhibitions, and won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2014.

In 2015, Artnet published an article suggesting that Cary Joji Fukunaga had appropriated content for his movie Beasts of No Nation without crediting the work of Richard Mosse, of his infrared photos of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2017 his video installation Incoming, commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria and the Barbican Art Gallery, also made with Frost and Tweeten, won the Prix Pictet.

Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said "His images from there often seem to skirt the real and the fictional, simply though [sic] their heightened and unreal colours. He has made the familiar seem strange and the real seem heightened to the point of absurdity. This is war reportage – but not as we know it."

Willy Staley, writing in the New York Times Magazine, said "Mosse highlights the eastern Congo's natural bounty while acknowledging both the medium's origins and, he points out, the West's tendency to see in the Congo only darkness and insanity."

Mosse has received criticism for his work, notably from Ireland, for presenting difficult global conflicts or deeply personal situations amidst these conflicts in an overly aestheticised way, being described as "problematic", "troubling", and discomforting.