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| Photo Credit |
The beauty of landscape photography is that you can analyze it in many different ways. It’s almost as if the photographer could never recreate the exact same photo of the landscape. This is due to the fact that many different things can affect the way the camera or photographer capture the landscape. For example, these things could be time of year, time of day, and weather conditions. The landscape of a country can also give it an identity according to a Journal of cultural and Media Studies article. In summary, they claim that you are defined as a country by the landscape you live in. The author of this article is from Australia and explains that when people think of Australia they think of the outback. With this being said, Mosse is trying to influence the audience’s vision of Congo by providing them a visual aid of the beautiful landscapes found there. . He does not want the Congo people to be represented by the constant violence that is present and reflected in the media. This piece is essentially Mosse’s attempt to portray The Democratic Republic of Congo as a peaceful setting that is overshadowed by the bloodshed of their people. Mosse is seeking to show what it’s potential could be without the constant violence that it has had to live with in its recent past.
Art History Archive defines surrealism as “Psychic automatism in its pure state by which we propose
to express- verbally, in writing, or in any other manner- the real process of thought.” and this piece of artwork is an excellent example of this art genre. Traditionally people wouldn’t think of taking pictures of just average everyday landscapes with a special infrared lens that was originally created by the U.S. military in order to detect enemies that were wearing camouflage. It makes the landscape look pure red while allowing it to contrast remarkably well with the greenish-blue hue of the water. The beauty of all of this is that because the photograph is so different than any other, you can interpret it in many different ways. You could say that the plants are all red because they are what is to love, the beauty of nature. ← this sentence just does not make sense to me. Or maybe you could say that the red represents blood. The blood is running downhill into the river that unifies the piece and carries it away. The river is a unifying quality of the piece because everything eventually ends up in it. This all ties back to what surrealism really is. According to Theartstory.org, surrealism is being able to unlock what your subconscious mind thinks. Looking at “Love is the Drug” helps you understand what your mind really thinks because it varies drastically from any other traditional photography. The color scheme allows for an entirely new path of interpretation because your conscious mind isn’t able to suppress the subconscious mind as effectively. Mosse has been quoted saying that “People are so offended by the color pink, it's just a fecking colour. Honestly like, how much more constructed is a pink photograph than a black and white photograph?” according to nofilmschool.org. This article points out that there is truth to Mosse’s statement because in the past, photographs were only black and white, no color. Now people are given this photograph and are thrown off by it. Why? Probably because they just haven’t been exposed to it enough throughout their life. After all, people are more comfortable with things if they have more experience with it. .
There is more to this photo than what is just seen. This photo is part of series of photos taken by Mosse relating to the Congo civil wars. According to Easterncongo.org, these wars began with the Rwandan genocide in 1994, which led to the death of over 800,000 people. The survivors then sought refuge in Congo to try and stay safe. With them, however, some of the perpetrators snuck in. This then led to Rwanda invading the Democratic Republic of Congo trying to find the people who perpetrated the ambush . Officially the war was stopped in 2003, but since then there has been constant conflict with no end in sight. Mosse takes these photos to try and get the word out about the conflict. The surrealism comes into play because war it self is so surreal. To someone who has never been in a war torn country they wouldn’t understand what it is like. To add onto that, Mosse also takes the photos with his infrared lens. This adds the entire next step of surrealism. The people are not affected in the infrared photos, only their surroundings. They still look completely normal compared to the scenery around them. In my opinion it makes the people seem more docile because of the unordinary color scheme that is happening around them. Mosse’s eventual goal is to spread enough awareness of this cause and end the war. He doesn’t want to see any more people harmed. He wants violence eradicated and peace to be restored. The more out of the ordinary it is, the more unlikely people are to do it.
One of Mosse’s other types of work is his short film on the Civil War in Congo. The 39-minute film is named Enclave. It is shot on the traditional discontinued film that he takes his photographs with, called Aerochrome. The film can add other things to photographs, most notably, sound. When you can hear the sounds of war, it makes you connect better to the people that are put in that position. With the traditional infrared photographs like Love is the Drug, you have more time to digest the surreal setting you are seeing. In this film you have less time to comprehend everything being shown to you, so you need to learn to adjust. The film isn’t one photo to digest, but one entire movement that has a different aspect of connection than the photographs that Mosse takes.
There are a variety of ways that someone could analyze “Love is the drug”. When analyzing art there really isn’t a wrong way to go about it as long as you have evidence to support your ideas. One is that you could only look at the photo itself and not conduct any research. If someone were to not conduct any research, they wouldn’t know how this photo was taken or the background information. They wouldn’t know where the photo taken, or the motives behind Mosse traveling to this area to take these photos. They would simply see it as a landscape with surreal colors. I took these points into consideration while doing my own research. .
My initial observation of this piece was that I was viewing an average landscape photo, perhaps one that had been edited in Photoshop to give it surreal colors. I also tried to look deeply into the title to come up with an explanation as to why the author would give it that title, specifically. I came to the conclusion that the scene is red because red is the symbolic color of love and all of the red plants are created by reproducing with each other (or “loving” each other). With the justification for the red color out of the way, I couldn’t describe why the water was edited to be a blue-green color. The only conclusion I had for that was Mosse wanted a color to contrast the red.
Before my second time analyzing the piece, I took the time to do more research into some of the other pieces of work done by the photographer . I then understood that Mosse wanted to represent the Congo scenery as pure and as beautiful as he could. The red scenery still represents love. He wants the two opposing sides of love to come together. He wants the fighting to end. Love is the drug that the two sides are in need of to put an end to a very bloody and unnecessary battle. The river in the valley portrays unity because it connects the two. It splits in some places, but in the end it comes together as one whole river. What Mosse wants is the two sides of love to come together into one.
In closing, Love Is the Drug is a piece of art that has a meaning much deeper than what you see on the surface. On the surface you will see a landscape that has been given surreal colors to make it look unlike any other piece you might’ve seen before. To fully understand the piece, you need to look deeper. Specifically, into the history of the artist and the setting of the scene. This will uncover that this piece is taken with an infrared camera amongst a civil war in Congo. Richard Mosse’s goal is to raise awareness about the war effort through his surreal style of photography.
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| Photo Credit |
There is more to this photo than what is just seen. This photo is part of series of photos taken by Mosse relating to the Congo civil wars. According to Easterncongo.org, these wars began with the Rwandan genocide in 1994, which led to the death of over 800,000 people. The survivors then sought refuge in Congo to try and stay safe. With them, however, some of the perpetrators snuck in. This then led to Rwanda invading the Democratic Republic of Congo trying to find the people who perpetrated the ambush . Officially the war was stopped in 2003, but since then there has been constant conflict with no end in sight. Mosse takes these photos to try and get the word out about the conflict. The surrealism comes into play because war it self is so surreal. To someone who has never been in a war torn country they wouldn’t understand what it is like. To add onto that, Mosse also takes the photos with his infrared lens. This adds the entire next step of surrealism. The people are not affected in the infrared photos, only their surroundings. They still look completely normal compared to the scenery around them. In my opinion it makes the people seem more docile because of the unordinary color scheme that is happening around them. Mosse’s eventual goal is to spread enough awareness of this cause and end the war. He doesn’t want to see any more people harmed. He wants violence eradicated and peace to be restored. The more out of the ordinary it is, the more unlikely people are to do it.
 |
| Photo Credit |
One of Mosse’s other types of work is his short film on the Civil War in Congo. The 39-minute film is named Enclave. It is shot on the traditional discontinued film that he takes his photographs with, called Aerochrome. The film can add other things to photographs, most notably, sound. When you can hear the sounds of war, it makes you connect better to the people that are put in that position. With the traditional infrared photographs like Love is the Drug, you have more time to digest the surreal setting you are seeing. In this film you have less time to comprehend everything being shown to you, so you need to learn to adjust. The film isn’t one photo to digest, but one entire movement that has a different aspect of connection than the photographs that Mosse takes.
There are a variety of ways that someone could analyze “Love is the drug”. When analyzing art there really isn’t a wrong way to go about it as long as you have evidence to support your ideas. One is that you could only look at the photo itself and not conduct any research. If someone were to not conduct any research, they wouldn’t know how this photo was taken or the background information. They wouldn’t know where the photo taken, or the motives behind Mosse traveling to this area to take these photos. They would simply see it as a landscape with surreal colors. I took these points into consideration while doing my own research. .
My initial observation of this piece was that I was viewing an average landscape photo, perhaps one that had been edited in Photoshop to give it surreal colors. I also tried to look deeply into the title to come up with an explanation as to why the author would give it that title, specifically. I came to the conclusion that the scene is red because red is the symbolic color of love and all of the red plants are created by reproducing with each other (or “loving” each other). With the justification for the red color out of the way, I couldn’t describe why the water was edited to be a blue-green color. The only conclusion I had for that was Mosse wanted a color to contrast the red.
Before my second time analyzing the piece, I took the time to do more research into some of the other pieces of work done by the photographer . I then understood that Mosse wanted to represent the Congo scenery as pure and as beautiful as he could. The red scenery still represents love. He wants the two opposing sides of love to come together. He wants the fighting to end. Love is the drug that the two sides are in need of to put an end to a very bloody and unnecessary battle. The river in the valley portrays unity because it connects the two. It splits in some places, but in the end it comes together as one whole river. What Mosse wants is the two sides of love to come together into one.
In closing, Love Is the Drug is a piece of art that has a meaning much deeper than what you see on the surface. On the surface you will see a landscape that has been given surreal colors to make it look unlike any other piece you might’ve seen before. To fully understand the piece, you need to look deeper. Specifically, into the history of the artist and the setting of the scene. This will uncover that this piece is taken with an infrared camera amongst a civil war in Congo. Richard Mosse’s goal is to raise awareness about the war effort through his surreal style of photography.
Fantastic article, very well explained, thanks! Beatriz Barata
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