The Enclave - Richard Mosse (UTI)

The Enclave - Richard Mosse 

Richard Mosse (born 1980 in Ireland, now based in New York) holds an MFA in photography from Yale University School of Art and a postgraduate diploma in fine art from Goldsmiths, London.

The Enclave is a photo exhibition and a short film did for Richard Mosse and his partners Trevor Tweeten (cinematographer) and Ben frost (composer/ sound design), they travelled in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and they had infiltrated in war zone plagued by frequents ambushes, massacres and systematic sexual violence with army groups. The resulte of those photographs and the Mak’s overthinking about war photograph is The Enclave.

The exhibition is composed by a few landscape pictures that shows the views from Congo, a beautiful scenery in my opinion, with the pink flowers and the river and for a short documentary (that lasts approximately 40 minutes), the documentary portrays the life of those people that have been participated on this war, showing the day-by-day or the routines of them and things like massacres, the ambushes and sometimes the sexual violence that the women and the children suffering. 

Even with this, the documentary revel the daily of those people, like when they are at the “church”, doing their own things, taking a shower, eating and others stuff, but the main focus of the documentary is show to “the world” what happens with the army (the good and the bad stuff that they did and suffering) and the people that are affected by the war, many of them do not have choice to escape of this and are pushed into the middle of this situation, just trying to survive. The Enclave show to world the other side of the war, and how innocent people trying to survive. 

Richard Mosse was so brave when decided to do this documentary, to show the “two sides of the war” and beyond the good job he explored the beautiful landscapes of Congo.

The Light of Other Days by Jim Maginn - (UTI)

The Light of Other Days by Jim Maginn

The Light of Other Days is a photo exhibition of black and white photographs portraits by Jim Maginn. Jim Maginn is a photographer from Northern Ireland - Co. Armagh. The exhibition is a collection of Irish Traditional Musicians from 1985-2012.

Some portraits shows the musicians siting in chairs, laughing with their instruments, or also look at the camera waiting for the perfect moment to play, with all the intensity we can realize the real value of the music for them and for the photographer. 

For Maginn’s the most important thing is catch the real expressions of the people that he are shooting, like capturing them singing, playing guitar, violins, mandolins, or them laughing, either in the quiet moments when their shows “ourselves”, the true ones, to the camera.

According to the Jim Maginn: “A great photograph is about decisive moments. And clarity of composition. You have to think about proportion and about where you are standing in relation to the subject when you take a photograph.”

I really appreciated the intensity of the pictures, we can feel the passion for the music in the eyes of the artists and the dedication of the photographer.