Óscar Monzón wins Paris Photo First PhotoBook Award
Óscar Monzón’s KARMA has won the First PhotoBook Award in this year’s PhotoBook Awards organised by Paris Photo and Aperture.
The announcement was made at Paris Photo earlier today.
KARMA, published by RVB Books, is the culmination of images Monzón took in Madrid between 2009 and 2013 of people in their cars.
In the project, Monzón, who was featured in BJP November 2012, photographed people snorting cocaine and arguing, amongst other private moments, to explore the notion of public and private space, specifically drivers’ relationships to their cars.
As Monzón told BJP in November 2012, he positions himself on a bridge or at the side of the road and uses a 200mm telephoto zoom lens, a mulitiplier and flash to capture his subjects. “I always shoot when the cars are stopped at traffic lights,” he says. “It’s very important for me to work at night because the privacy we have within the vehicle is reinforced by the darkness, and the invasion of light and the light from the flash is more obvious.”
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.