Richard Mosse

Flooded Municipality, Amazonas, from the series Tristes Tropiques, 2021

Richard Mosse’s series Tristes Tropiques features a series of large-scale photographic maps describing sites of environmental harm taking place across Brazil’s “arc of deforestation.” These topographical images in vibrant colors depict fragile organic matter dominated by extractive violence at the hands of humans. They are living maps that show life, but also capture forest dieback, tipping points, and ecological contamination. Mosse used geographic information system (GIS) technology and processed thousands of multispectral images taken by drone over each site to create depth-perspective maps that highlight areas of environmental degradation. Multispectral imaging is used by scientific groups to detect deforestation and ecological damage and to locate areas of concentrated CO2 release, toxic pollution, and other aspects of fragile ecosystem degradation.