Richard Mosse

Hold These Truths

• Still from Incoming #293, 2016
  Digital c-print on metallic paper
  12 ¼ x 21 x 1 ¾ inches framed
  Edition 1 of 5 + 2AP
  Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

The invisible is rendered visible in the film stills Incoming, in which photographer Richard Mosse utilized military thermographic technology—normally used to locate and target enemies by detecting the presence of body heat—to make visible the human tragedies resulting from the mass migrations of refugees fleeing violence and genocide. The luminous figures appear dehumanized, even alien—a rendering that highlights the political over the corporeal. Still, there is an undeniable tenderness in these images that—much like the “camera” itself—inverts the lack of human detail into an intimate lament for displaced humanity, capturing what many cannot, or prefer not to see.