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March 30, 2010
Photographer Richard Mosse, originally from Ireland, is a graduate of the Yale MFA program in photography, as well as a recipient of a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing and Visual Arts. This Fellowship has funded Mosse's ongoing series of travels around the world--- for two full years of traveling to make photographs of things falling apart or in decay.
The series that caught my eye was the one entitled Nomands, which refers to wrecked cars in the primeval desert landscapes of Iraq.
Richard Mosse, wrecked car, Nomand series
These are forgotten relics or junk in the middle of nowhere, and they offer a way of reading the world and unpacking history. Mosse works slowly and methodically, lugging around an enormous studio camera and tripod, rather than shooting thousands of images on digital.
A latter series ---The Fall broadens this theme to crashed planes whilst earlier ones explored buildings damaged by war and earthquakes.
The cars----cast-offs, long forgotten in the former war-zones, and now unknown relics of the war machine---- indicate how photography is firmly rooted in the world of things. It carries a trace signifying an actual physical memory of a part of the world at a specific time and place.
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I didn't like the Quick series, where Mosse photographed the Congo with his oversized wooden camera, shooting the landscape with colour infrared film so that the green jungle foliage turns red.