Oscar Monzon: KARMA

Óscar Monzón (Málaga, Spain – 1981) lives and works in Madrid. He is a member of BlankPaper collective from its foundation date in 2003, and from that year he develops different projects. He has been awarded a Visual Arts and Photography grant from the Spanish Ministry of Culture to work at Colegio de España in Paris (France), a grant from Fundación Temas de Arte, has been selected for Descubrimientos PHE and was finalist at the First Book Award 2013.

Spain – 

In Karma, a project developed in Madrid between 2009 and 2013, Óscar Monzón focuses on the car as a means of transportation that is not entirely distinct from the person who inhabits it, for the vehicle is in itself a product of the wheel that endlessly spins inside us.

Karma explores a range of unconscious human behaviours imprinted on our memory. In terms of the relationship we establish with the car, these forms of conduct materialise in specific ways: detachment, competition, aggressiveness.
 
 
 

Applying a visual language that eliminates the illusion of depth and emphasises abstraction, Karma brings us up close to the paradoxical intimacy provided by the car within public space, reflecting its occupants’ attitudes. The sequence of images combine human skin with aggressively designed bodyworks; headlights in the night conjure the image of wild animals; close-up flashes confront the people portrayed.

Ultimately, this work reveals the social and aesthetic evolution of humankind, driven by our abiding desire to attain the perfection of a machine.

“Karma is a brilliantly crafted mess of pictures taken from different angles between 2009 and 20013, is a book by Spanish Photographer Oscar Monzon about the relationship between vehicles waiting on the traffic light at night and people inside it.” – Manik Katyal

ISBN 979-10-90306-18-9

RVB Books/Dalpine, 2013

Editorial coordination: Gonzalo Golpe

Design: Eloi Gimeno

Prepress: Víctor Garrido

Softcover

128 pages

21 x 29,7 cm

Photography

Winner of The Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award 2013

Related Posts

Colin Pantall on Kazuma Obara “Silent Histories”

Japan – Grave of the Fireflies is an anime film about the Second World War in Japan.  The main characters ...

Tiane Doan na Champassak: Kolkata

India –  August, 1943. Night is falling on Calcutta, silencing its flocks of ravens, but wakening another kind of life ...

Space Invader – Christian Caujolle

France – Emaho caught up with celebrated French curator and photographer Christian Caujolle to see the view from his rarefied ...

Maciej Pestka: The Life of Psy

Ireland –   “Representatives of major fashion brands went crazy, girls threw themselves into his arms, and drinks flower like waterfalls. ...

Aaron McElroy: After Awake

THIS STORY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT After Wake is a collection of visual fragments & anonymous female subjects from the artist’s ...

Nathan Pearce: Midwest Dirt

USA – ‘When I was 18 years old I packed my bags and left rural Illinois. It had been my ...

Tiago Casanova: “The Pearl of Atlantic” – Subjective Relationship Between Beauty and Uglyness

Portugal –  Pearl* – “Hard object that grows around a grain of sand or other foreign matter as a defensive ...

Colin Pantall on Lorenzo Vitturi’s Dalston Anatomy

United Kingdom – Every now and then, a photography book comes along that looks completely different. Dalston Anatomy by Lorenzo ...

Goodbye My Chechnya – Diana Markosian

Russia – “Goodbye My Chechnya”  chronicles the lives of young Muslim girls in the aftermath of war.  This piece aims to ...