ÉXTASIS
Óscar Monzón’s somehow familiar but unsettling snapshots use one of South America’s most popular tourist destinations, the Iguazú Falls, which border Brazil and Argentina, as a location for an exploration of technology and advertising through mass tourism.
The photographs in Óscar Monzón’s second book are slashed by diagonal lines, revealed over the course of the book to be the stems of selfie sticks wielded by tourists. Monzón’s framing suggests that technologically mediated and perhaps ego-driven engagement with landscape has an eliminating or distorting effect – no wonder that the prevailing experience of the media-obsessed traveller may be disappointment, alienation or disillusionment. ◉
All images from Óscar Monzón, Extasis, Dalpine, 2017