Militarized Landscapes

In his "Infra" series Richard Mosse uses Kodak Aerochrome—a film once used for military surveillance—which turns lush verdant hills into glowing pink vistas. In a subversion of camouflage, Mosse reveals the narratives of those effected by the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The photographer talks to The Karte about his aspirations, "Infra" and Congo, explaining his work as operating "between fiction and the real."

An-My Lê's work turns the theater of war into a stage for her photographs. She often works with reenactors to create battle scenes, and documents training forces in preparation for war. She's stated being less interested in the psychology of war, but rather how the activities of war leaves traces on the landscape. Untitled, Thanh-Hoa is described as an "autobiographical still life" where she reconnects with her homeland and reflects on the country she left in 1975. In her Art21 feature she says, “I think my main goal is to try to photograph landscape in such a way so that history could be suggested through the landscape, whether industrial history or my personal history."

Shai Kremer's photographs raise questions of ownership and the complicated history of conquerors. His "Fallen Empires" series visits the sites of architectural ruins related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The artist states, "The camera unearths testimonies from the past and shows a different perspective. It reveals inconvenient truths and explores the landscape as a place of amnesia and erasure."