Photographer Richard Mosse was arrested on the Greek island of Chios by undercover police officers while observing an anti-refugee rally held by residents, The Art Newspaper reports. The 2017 Prix Pictet prizewinner said he had just arrived at the rally when plain clothes policemen manhandled him to the ground and arrested him, holding him in a police cell for several hours.
Mosse published the news on an Instagram post shortly after the incident, adding: ‘I spent a few hours trying to communicate with a Kurdish refugee from Kobane. Such an eye opener. I’ve seen such warmth & compassion from the people of Lesbos but here on Chios the vibe is completely different. Extremist, angry & afraid. The people of Chios regularly pelt refugees with rocks & burned the camp a few months ago.’
He was released from the cell after Greek photographer Daphne Tolis intervened, telling the police that he was a ‘famous photographer who had recently been given an important award by Kofi Annan’.
Mosse has also commented, ‘The police seemed to jump to the conclusion, based on me being a foreigner and wearing black, that I was an anarchist and must be arrested. I hurt no one; spoke to no one; bumped into no one; harassed nobody. If, as an EU citizen, I can be treated in this way by a European police force, how then are stateless and vulnerable refugees treated?’
Read our review of Richard Mosse’s show at the Barbican, London
20 June 2017
