Daily Dose

Richard Mosse - The Enclave - Foam Amsterdam

Foam Amsterdam. You enter a dark room and find yourself surrounded by projections of pink tinted video clips and noises that seem to promise nothing good. You cannot escape those scenes on the screen portraying rebel enclaves in eastern Congo; everywhere you turn you are facing another image. The sceneries do not feel like those news clips you are already used to. They do not numb you. Looking at them does not become easier with time. You feel trapped in something you do not really want to flee from, because it is so strangely appealing, so aesthetically pleasant, somehow beautiful.

Richard Mosse’s exhibition ‘The Enclave’ challenges traditional documentary photography, because it combines shocking social and political documents with aesthetics and beauty by using a film technique that was once employed by the military to detect camouflage from the air. Due to this method, every green element is dyed bright pink. As simple as it sounds, it completely got me. I stood in between these double-sided screens and felt like I had left the city for a moment to become part of this surreal world of beauty and violence. I did not leave the room for a long time, I somehow wanted to make sure that I saw every image and heard every sound, even if it was not something that was easy to consume. When you finally step out of the installation you come across some of Mosse’s landscape photography. It is interesting how you have to remind yourself that those trees in the images are not actually pink. You adapt to this world so quickly that the illusion feels like reality. However, this reality is not a calming one. After you have seen the video installation, it seems to be impossible to ignore the threatening and alarming character that lies behind the beautiful appearance.

If you want to be fascinated, disturbed, overwhelmed, and moved at the same time; visit Richard Mosse’s ‘The Enclave’ in Foam Amsterdam (21.03- 01.06.14). Click here!

Charlotte Knaup