“I’ve been documenting refugee camps throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa using a special military tool.” – Richard Mosse.
On #InternationalMigrantsDay, we are featuring a powerful photograph by #PrixPictet 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦 winner Richard Mosse (@richardmosse_ ).
His series 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘱𝘴 (2016), captured with a military grade thermographic camera that does not recognise skin colour, sheds light on the sinister reality of immigration, border control and free trade.
“Tens of millions of refugees and migrants find themselves in limbo, excluded from participating or contributing to our modern societies”, he explains.
Watch a short interview with the photographer on our website via link in bio.
#PrixPictetSpace #Photography #PhotographyAward
Image credits:
Richard Mosse
Idomeni
2016
Series: Heat Maps
Following the cancellation of Palestinian author Adania Shibli's prize ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I am appalled by Litprom’s unilateral decision to “postpone it”. As an invited speaker to this year’s Fair as part of the S+T+ARTS Prize programme—an initiative of the European Commission to promote innovative projects exploring the interconnection of science, technology and the arts—I believe that I cannot talk about technology, art or climate struggles when thousands of lives are lost in ongoing brutal attacks in Palestine and Israel, and critical voices, their work and achievements are being silenced, especially in Germany.
It’s impossible to talk freely about cultural innovation when it is not recognised that people’s lives, culture and environment in Palestine are under an apartheid regime and occupation for the past 75 years, and millions of people are continuously displaced from their homes. I am therefore withdrawing my participation from the talks at the Frankfurt Book Fair, whose president is also the head of Litprom, unless there is a sincere apology for curtailing freedom of speech and a reversal of Litprom’s decision. Cultural institutions, writers and art workers must call for the end of the war and the occupation now.
In solidarity.
@buchmesse@frankfurtbookfair
Twelve of my photos have been installed on the outside of the Louvre as part of La Biennale PhotoClimat in Paris. Place du Palais Royal, opening this Sunday and runs until 9 Oct. They did a superb job printing onto wood which was then shaped into waves. A great way to reach the general public beyond a museum going audience. Captions are accessible via a QR code. Other shows have been installed around Paris too. @photoclimat_officiel
Broken Spectre has just won the S+T+ARTS Grand prize of the European Commission honoring Innovation in Technology, Industry and Society stimulated by the Arts. @startseu
Broken Spectre employs a number of scientific imaging approaches as a way of attempting to communicate the hyperobject of deforestation in the Amazon Basin, the largest tropical rainforest, spanning nine countries, and the ineffable subject of climate change itself. To do this, I worked extensively with a wide team, from long time collaborators, Ben Frost and Trevor Tweeten, to scientists, botanists, entemologists, spectroscopy and optics experts. The film even involved the invention of the world’s first (and probably last) multispectral camera, in collaboration with Toronto based Spectral Devices. Generous input and guidance was provided by members of MapBiomas, Serrapilheira, Planet Labs, CERN, and many more.
@trevortweeten@ethermachines@jeromethelia@uchidagabriel@alessandrofalco@viaartfund@ngvmelbourne@sebastian_v_p_louis@serpentineuk@jackshainman@jointsloose@artsatcern@institutoserrapilheira@mapbiomasbrasil@planetlabs
I came across this UN report on child recruitment by armed groups in eastern Congo from 2017. I remember the printed version, which had additional images and was nicely done. Things are really bad in these regions again today. It hasn’t improved, I’m afraid. This report was put together by Cornelia Walther of UNICEF. @unicef@monuscoindrc
I’m thrilled to be on the jury of PUBLISHING ECOLOGY, an award for artists making work about climate change and the environment. The winning artist will receive a month residency at the former studios of Sol LeWitt & Anna Mahler in Spoleto, Italy, from Sept-Oct 2023, where they will make new work for a book that will be edited, designed and published by Loose Joints in summer 2024. The jury includes @luciapietroiusti_@daphnemilner@guyhrobertson & @jointsloose
Applications until 30th April. A once in a lifetime opportunity to spend time working at the @mahlerlewitt Studios. Anyone can apply at award.loosejoints.biz. Tell all your friends. Supported by @atmos & @picter_com
A few weeks ago, I took this photo of a well loved and very special Sumaumeira tree (Ceiba pentandra) in the city of Belém do Pará. I may have been one of the last to take its photo, as it fell a few days ago. The third photo is by well known Brazilian photographer Luiz Braga. His fine photo shows it decades ago, before the cathedral fence was built. The people of Belém are mourning the loss of this historic tree. Sumaumeiras are the largest tree in the Amazon. When I visited the Javari Valley, I learned that Indigenous people in this region communicate over great distances by beating on the roots of the Samaúma. @luizbraga@belemphotos
Incoming graces the cover of Barbara Leckie’s new book, Climate Change, Interrupted, Representation and the Remaking of Time, published by Stanford University Press. Leckie is Professor of English & Comparative Study of Literature Art and Culture at Carleton University. Leckie meditates on Incoming in relation to Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, Klee’s Angelus Novus, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour & the London Poor (1851), George Eliot’s Adam Bede, Robert MacFarlane’s Underland, Joyce’s Ulysses, Ava Duvernay, Eve Sedgwick, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe, Derrida and many more. A fascinating book, beautifully written, it meanders broadly across time and cultures in pursuit of time and representation. Say what they will about Incoming, it never ceases to generate discussion. @stanfordupress@mack_books
Oil spills in Block 192, near the River Tigre, within Kichwa Territory on Peru’s northern border with Ecuador. The pipeline was built in the 1970s and produced 120,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak in the early 1980s. It has between 30-40 years of oil production left, but was abandoned in 2015 and the pipeline infrastructure left badly deteriorated, leaking and polluting the environment, biomass and Kichwa population with cadmium, mercury, copper and other toxic heavy metals. Clean up efforts are particularly challenging in the rainforest as the nutrient-poor clay soil in Block 192 make it difficult to employ microorganisms that can effectively break down oil and gas. The Kichwa people feel abandoned by PetroPeru and the multinational oil concessions (Occidental and more recently PetroPlus and Dutch oil company, Resource Corporation). They told us we were the first international photographers to visit their community and document the crisis. There are rumors in Iquitos and in Lima that the Indigenous community are cutting the pipelines deliberately, which is clearly untrue — the pipes are totally rusted out and not maintained. Satellite GIS imaging, showing changes to levels of chlorophyll, has revealed extensive leaking along the entire pipeline, much of it deep in the forest. The last photo of us working was taken by one of our guides, Jean Pierre, who superimposed the faces of members of his community onto the image.
Happiest in the field. Just spent four days boating up the Rio Tigre from Iquitos to document oil spills inside Kichwa Indigenous territory, on Peru’s northern border with Ecuador. Finally made it to their settlement, 12 Octubre, a deeply ironic name given that was the date Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, and their ancestral lands have since been devastated by crude oil spilled by Occidental Oil company. You can smell it on the wind. We don’t hear a lot about this in the news because it’s so damn hard to reach this place. The river is historically low for this time of year so our boat hit a number of rocks and trees along the way. The captain told us it needs to rain in Ecuador for the Tigre to fill. The Tigre’s catchment area is just south of the Llanganates-Sangay Corridor and Finca Palmonte, where I began this project back in 2018, so I feel like I’ve come full circle, in a way. Great to be back in the field. Portrait by @alessandrofalco@finca_palmonte
