Monica Alcazar-Duarte is a Mexican/British photographer and independent curator living in between Mexico and London. A former charity campaigner, she currently works as a documentary photographer for self-initiated independent projects and NGOs in England and abroad. Her work focuses on societies in the midst of a struggle to change. Monica is engaged with how we read and integrate images and information, at a time when information and its context changes at such a rapid pace. Her work examines the relationship between context, interconnection and conclusion. It draws attention to how much we all need to develop a more ‘curatorial gaze’. Through interactive presentation she challenges the viewer to look at what appears as disconnected or even contradictory, with a discerning eye. Her work has been exhibited in London and throughout Europe. In 2014 she was nominated for the inaugural Tim Hetherington Visionary Grant. She recently completed a project challenging the portrayal of Mexican live in mainstream media and popular culture. Your photographs could be used by drug dealers was recently acquired for the book collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Yale University Gallery and The Joan-Flasch Collection at The Arts Institute of Chicago. Monica is a graduate from the MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, with a first degree in Performance. She is also a recipient of a MEAD Fellowship from University of the Arts London.
