Photo by Finbarr O’Reilly 

In a country that produces music like Baloji’s and and protests like those pictured above by Finbarr O’Reilly (more here), it is unsurprising the issues of representation are contentious.

Yesterday, Congolese voters went to polls amid violence and confusion. For more on the elections, read Congo Siasa or Texas in Africa. The upshot of the election is as of yet unclear, but while Congo is in the news (again) I wanted to take this opportunity to write about Richard Mosse’s continued series of infrared images of DRC.

I first wrote about Mosse’s work last year with reluctant praise. I liked the images, but feared they were a bit gimmicky. However, Mosse’s newest set puts these concerns to rest — he’s committed to exploring a complicated region through a medium fraught with its own limitations.

In an interview on the photoblog Conscientious, Mosse speaks to these issues directly:

Susan Sontag pointed out that photojournalists have long avoided the ethic/aesthetic dilemma by ‘flying low artistically speaking’, using grainy black and white film to appear sober and objective while portraying human suffering. I feel that it’s equally valid to explore the camera’s full aesthetic potential. Naturalism is no greater claim to veracity than other strategies.

I was searching for a new form, or generic hybrid, that would go a step further. While making the work, I was acutely aware of the fact that infrared light is invisible, so I was literally photographing blind. The whole process seemed preposterous. I felt like the protagonist in Gogol’s Dead Souls, quantifying an absence using a meticulous scientific method while engaged in a picaresque trajectory through an impossible land…

At the end of the day, I feel that journalism’s premise is often not simply to inform, but also to affirm our world view. I take issue not with its informing role, but with this affirmation. I believe that it’s imperative to challenge our thinking, particularly in more volatile and loaded landscapes whose narratives are frequently calcified by mass media interests. My work is not intended as a criticism of journalism (which is tremendously important). Rather, it operates within the open field of contemporary art, where the emphasis is not on the answers, but on the questions – not on the facts, but on what they add up to.

While votes are added up, and news briefs and photo reportages accumulate on the internet, it’s good to have Mosse’s work as an additional viewpoint. Neither his work, nor the work of the journalists covering the elections, is as complete without the other.

 For more on representations of Congo, see also:

Pete Muller: beyond hordes of angry men with guns and cows
Of photographs and soldiers in DRC, redux

Pete Muller is a photojournalist based in Juba, South Sudan. I want to point out two series he’s done recently. The first is a series of portraits of Dinka cattle raiders.

On Time’s photography blog Lightbox, Pete writes:

The men pictured in this series are members of the Dinka Rek sub-tribe and self-identify as a “brigade.” In this exceptionally remote area of southern Sudan, there are no signs of the region’s soon-to-be-independent government. No army. No police. No civil servants. In this void, communities are wholly responsible for their own security in an environment of extreme risk and hostility. The ubiquitous presence of weapons creates a deadly and delicate power balance between the competing pastoralist groups. If the government moves to disarm one sub-tribe, they will face immediate threat of raiding from neighboring groups that retain their weapons.

In addition to be technically superb photographs, what I really like about these images is the individuality and identity that each of the subjects has. And by viewing a series of portraits, I get a sense of a textured community of discrete individuals, rather than a sort of pre-historic and stereotypical horde of angry men with guns and cows. It’s difficult to make the same sort of sweeping statements all too common in media coverage when you as a viewer are offered the chance straight into the eyes of a young woman or check out a dude’s awesome aqua and pink shirt. These images aren’t of a “tribe,” but of specific people with specific personalities who make specific choices.

Pete uses a similar method in a series of portraits of women in DRC all of whom were among “the nearly 50 women who described their brutalization and rape by a unit of Congolese soldiers who attacked Fizi, D.R.C. on Jan. 1, 2011.”

On Lightbox, Pete explains:

“Once we had established the condition of relative anonymity for the women, dozens of rape survivors were eager to pose for portraits. They moved quietly to the center of the room and waited patiently for me to work. In many instances, I was required to use my hands to make minor adjustments to their stance and location. Their faces were already covered and, given the horrible experiences they’d so recently endured at the hands of men, I felt overwhelming pressure to guide them as delicately as possible. I moved them gently by their shoulders and spoke softly in KiSwahili, a common language in eastern Congo. I felt the weight of crimes committed by fellow men and, in those moments, felt ashamed to be part of the group.”

There are many photos of women in DRC who have been raped, and many that hide the subject’s identity. But by creating a series of similarly staged portraits, Pete brings a sense of individuality to each of the women shown. I’m drawn to the bright vertical stripes the first woman wears, the slack arms of the second woman, the tender moments between mother and child. These images give evidence of the scope of the problem in a way that a one-off photograph or a more straightforward narrative  photo essay on DRC does not demonstrate.

Thanks to Pete for letting me post so many of his images.

The first set of beautiful photos I’d like to point out are by Jessica Hilltout of football in Africa. They’re features on the Lens today, but make sure you also check out her website. I also love her photos on Imperfection, as well as how she documents her style of working. Thanks to Laura from AidWatchers for originally showcasing Jessica’s lovely work.

I love photos that explore ideas and that’s exactly what Carl de Keyzer does in his series “Congo (Belge)” featured on the New Yorker Photo Booth today. The photos are unusual – at times disconcerting and at times engaging, and at most times both. Definitely worth your bandwidth.

From a great series of portraits, Congo: 50 years, 50 faces by Stephan Vanfleteren.

Jean-Claude Lusumba, photographer, Kisangani ‘I have to pay $25 each year to be allowed to photograph in the street, and even then I often have to pay bribes to soldiers so they don’t confiscate my camera. Even with an innocent family photo under a tree, the soldiers can claim that that tree is an “object of military importance”. Because there is no work, I started photographing people in the street. I have my films developed by the Lebanese for 300 Congolese francs. I have to be careful with the pictures. Often two exposures per portrait, three at most. But always with flash. That makes the person more clearly visible and it is also more important. Flash is for starlets, and that’s what we Congolese like. Apart from the films and developing, the batteries for the flash gun are a heavy expense. A wedding photo costs $1, a funeral photo $2. Why twice as much? People always come to collect a wedding photo but that’s far less likely with a photo of a corpse.’