BROKEN SPECTRE by Richard Mosse

About the productJapanese

A collection of works by Irish photographer Richard Mosse, winner of the Deutsche Burse Photography Prize, in which he pushes the boundaries of photographic expression to raise awareness of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the climate change it is causing tend to play out as too vast to comprehend, too subtle to recognize, and too ordinary to see. In his most ambitious film to date, the author employs a dazzling array of photographic techniques to convey the scale and urgency of the Amazon's massive and impending collapse.

The film is a 74-minute immersive film that moves between multiple ecological narratives, from the geomorphic to the anthropocentric, and sensitively examines non-human violence and survival. The author and his team have spent years documenting the various aspects of destruction, degradation and environmental crime in the Amazon basin and its associated ecosystems.

The series operates at different scales: blurry images taken with a fluorescent microscope provide scientifically detailed portrayals of the interdependent complexity of Amazonian biomes, while infrared landscapes depicted in cinematic black and white images trace illegal mining, logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial agriculture and indigenous activities.

Meanwhile, multispectral aerial imagery shows vast expanses of bare land in stark contrast to lush rainforest, illustrating just how massive and systematic the destruction of the Amazon is.

The photographs in this book, using multispectral cameras that mimic satellite imaging technology, ultraviolet botanical studies, and heat-sensitive analog film, make the invisible visible, capturing the landscapes distorted, mottled, and degraded by the stressed environment and the burning forest itself. To accompany these experimental documentaries, the artist has produced hypnotically vivid aerial maps that, using specially developed GIS (geographic information system) imaging technology, piercingly magnify and color the scale and scope of nature's decline.

As climate change continues to define the future of our time and our planet, the author witnesses a accelerating catastrophe. Recent scientific studies predict that the Amazon is reaching a tipping point, at which point it will no longer be able to produce rain, causing mass deforestation and devastating levels of carbon emissions with implications for climate change, biodiversity, and local and international communities. The author portrays both sides of a tragic human story, from the indigenous fight for survival of the Yanomami and Munduruku peoples, to illegal gold miners who pollute and destroy entire rivers for a handful of gold, to Brazilian cowboys who deliberately burn wilderness to create pasture for cattle to sell in the international meat and hide markets.

Product Information

release date Available now

Part numberGPHT12071W-9781912719433

Specification softcover／440 pages／243 x 315 mm

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