The Collection

Richard Mosse is a photographer and filmmaker whose work expands the language of documentary practice by employing specialized imaging technologies to render urgent global crises in ways that are at once unsettling and seductive. Moving between fine art and photojournalism, Mosse creates immersive, collaborative projects that confront violence, displacement, and environmental destruction, revealing what is often invisible to conventional modes of seeing.

Mosse first gained international attention with Infra (2010–11), his series documenting conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo using discontinued Kodak Aerochrome infrared surveillance film. The technology transformed dense green foliage into vivid pinks and reds, recasting war photography in psychedelic hues. The project culminated in The Enclave, a six-channel 16mm film installation that represented Ireland at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2014).

In Incoming (2017), Mosse turned a military-grade thermal camera—normally used for border surveillance—toward the mass migration of refugees across the Middle East and North Africa into Europe. The resulting 52-minute film installation, commissioned by the Barbican Art Centre and the National Gallery of Victoria, earned him the Prix Pictet in 2018. His most recent large-scale work, Broken Spectre (2022), explores the accelerating destruction of the Amazon Basin through scientific imaging techniques that expose ecological devastation as both data and spectacle.

Mosse studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, and received an MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art in 2008. His work has been exhibited widely, including at Tate Modern, London; Barbican Art Centre, London; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam; the Bass Museum, Miami; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk. His photographs and films are held in collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Victoria; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.