Richard Mosse on Using a Military Grade Camera to Find Signs of Life in Refugee Camps

On a tip from a friend, Mosse bought a military-grade camera meant for long-range battle surveillance that doesn’t see visible light. Instead, this camera sees heat and produces crisp black-and-white images that are exposed based on the relative warmth of everything in the frame. Mosse then used this camera, intended to track and target, as a way to document displacement and the daily fight for survival by the refugees living in camps across Europe for a new project called Heat Maps.