The French thinker Michel Serres cynically writes that we must love advertising, even though it «spreads falsehoods, exaggerates, fills up space with a mediocre din and ugly images, passes off abominable things for the nectar of the gods, multiplies the same way an epidemic does, intoxicates, and always lies». Yes, we must love it, because advertising is a promise of happiness, like religion or politics; the difference is that it does not hide its intent to persuade, putting its
cards on the table. The cards it reveals, and above all their evident effects, are the point at which Maya pours salt on the wound.

If we examine the context of the photographic works, we find no will to act as a mirror, but rather as an X-ray and a scalpel. Starting with entirely real urban scenes, Monzón draws out tension and unease, shaping a new version of street photography that goes to the opposite extreme of the untamed documentarism of Garry Winogrand, but that also transcends the theatricalized forms of Philip-Lorca di Corcia or Jeff Wall. 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 “happy world” where happiness is dehumanized and, as Monzón shows us, is one with the apocalypse.