In an attempt to render the scale and urgency of the Amazon’s extensive, impending collapse, Richard Mosse’s most ambitious work to date employs a dazzling array of photographic techniques. Broken Spectre is an immersive, 74-minute film that shifts between a manifold of ecological narratives, from the topographic to the anthropocentric, and to a careful examination of nonhuman violence and survival. Mosse and his team spent years documenting different fronts of destruction, degradation and environmental crimes in the Amazon Basin and related eco-systems.
Broken Spectre operates on multiple scales: inky, fluorescent microscopic imagery describes the interdependent complexity of the Amazonian biome in scientific detail, while cinematic monochrome infrared scenes track illegal mining, logging and burning, industrial agriculture and indigenous activism. Our book treats Mosse's diverse array of experimental documentary techniques using three different papers: a backbone of 70gsm staggered spreads of his panoramic dual-channel film that bleed across pages is intersected by glossy closeups of his immense aerial maps, printed using experimental high-gamut CMYK inks. Meanwhile, Mosse's monochrome documentary images are reproduced in warm tritones, and a 48pp booklet unpacks the work from various artistic, political and social angles.
An accompanying deluxe gatefold vinyl of Ben Frost's musical score to Broken Spectre was also produced, channelling the disharmony between natural chaos and capitalist attempt to impose order and control to the Amazon.
Loose Joints Publishing, 2022
440pp, 245 × 320 mm, 342 photos and film stills
Section-sewn debossed softcover on multiple paper stocks with gatefolds
With a 48pp booklet in English, Portuguese, Tupi-Mondé and Yanomami. Texts by Txai Suruí, Christian Viveros-Fauné, Gabriel Bogossian, and Jon Lee Anderson; interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
ISBN 978-1-912719-43-3
Book Design, Editing, Production
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