TITLE : URBAN SPRAWL EMPTINESS
SERIES
AUTHOR : EMMANUEL MONZON
Emmanuel Monzon’s photos have a visual strength that comes from their minimalist composition and the chosen color palette.
His modus operandi is that of a hunter who travels with his car in search of images.
The absence of people and the characteristics of the places portrayed convey a powerful feeling of isolation.
“I don’t want to go where I’m going, I just want to live where I am”
“Through my urban sprawl series I am asking myself : am I leaving a city or entering a new environment?
I like to play/’mix’ two approaches: The codes of the new topographics and the concept of “in between-two states” inspired by the anthropologist Marc Auge under the name of non-places.
I like transitional places, like intersections or passages from one world to another, such as from a residential area to an industrial area.
I also like the tourist places altered by the human trace. We often find this feeling of emptiness, of visual paradox by travelling throughout the United States.
The transition from one site to the next: You have arrived and at the same time you have never left.
I believe that the expansion of the urban or industrial landscape in the American natural landscape has redefined this space and has become itself a “non-place.”
In my artwork there is no judgment, no denunciation, only the picture itself.
If I could sum up the common theme of my photos, it would be about emptiness, about silence.
My pictures try to extract from the mundane urban landscape a form of estheticism.
Where most people only pass through, I stop and look for some form of poetic beauty. I like repetition, I like series, and I like driving around.”
About Emmanuel Monzon
Emmanuel Monzon is a photographer and visual artist based in Seattle, WA.
He graduated from the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Paris, France with honors.
His work has been featured throughout the US, Europe and Asia (through exhibitions, selections and various awards).
Through his work, he explores and questions the signs of urban sprawl in our visual field. His photographic process is being influenced by his background as a plastic artist.
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