Óscar Monzón: Order
ORDER covers a body of work carried out between 2014 and 2019 in different megacities around the world. This project pursues a subjective hypothesis about the reflection of advertising images in human appearances and behavior in urban life. Following the classic methodology of street photography (straight photography of a real scene without any manipulation), Óscar Monzón goes further by extracting moments and spaces which – due to their scenography – related and gestural precision- enter into direct dialogue with the images of the adverts that are ubiquitous in these locations, showing to us the opposite message or an interpretation of the consequences. These adverts, at first set aside from the narrative of the project, appear in the sequence as animated elements, as real and alive as the scenes that are documented in the project.
“Vertigo and nightmares imbue this introspective journey into the dark side of the shining world of appearances. A scene formed by dense atmospheres and dramatic lights frames these snapshots of “a brave new world” where happiness is dehumanized and, as Monzón shows us, is one with the apocalypse”. (Joan Fontcuberta)
About the Author
Based in Madrid, Óscar Monzón (1981) founded the Blank Paper collective in 2003 and developed different projects since then. In 2006 he received a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Culture to conclude the project Las Puertas de París and in 2011 he was a finalist in PHotoEspaña’s Descubrimientos award. After five years of work, he completed the series Karma, a work about the relationship between man and machine for which he received the First Book Award of Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation in 2013.
He says about his work: «The title is Maya and it refers to the Sanskrit term which is translated as illusion or unreality. I had this idea: When you look at something through a camera and then translate it into an image, spaces can become scenarios and people or situations can be seen as performers or staged moments. Based on that I started to work taking street pictures and trying to find the influence of advertising fiction on reality. At the same time, I took pictures directly from billboards and I put these together with the “real” pictures to allow a dialogue (…) like a boomerang game».
