Taking Tiger Mountain, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2011; copyright and courtesy Richard Mosse.

What lies beneath any meaningful perception of the ongoing conflict in the internally colonized Democratic Reputlic of Congo? Richard Mosse, a photographer armed with an 8 x 10 camera and Kodak’s outdated Aerochrome infrared surveillance film, sought to discover truth beyond journalism in his images of a war whose nomadic protagonists use the jungle as their natural camouflage.

A large selection of images from his work over the last two years opened last night at Jack Shainman Gallery, in Chelsea. Visitors are introduced to the proponents in this human rights catastrophe, which has continued for more than 15 years, through a series of pictures of groups of Tutsi militia, child solders, and youngsters victimized by war. The maganta hue of the landscape, at first jarringly out of synch with the battlegrounds, quickly becomes the norm as the eye adjusts to Mosse’s separate view of realities.

But one of the large-scale, seemingly peaceful landscapes sheds light on the tragedy of the Eastern Congo. In the ethereally beautiful eastern highlands, where there is, according to one of the captions, “nowhere to run,” nomadic herders mind their cattle, which range across a hillside into the valley below. A group of yert-like huts implies an ancient and ongoing way of life. Knowledge gleaned from the previous images in the gallery, however, informs viewers that this peaceful scene could become a field of slaughter at any given moment.

Richard Mosse | Infra continues through December 22 at Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20^th Street, NY, NY. A collector's edition of the book of the same title (Aperture 2012) is available at the gallery; a limited edition print is available through Aperture. More.

11182011