Contemporary Photographer Series - Alejandro Cartagena

from the series Suburbia Mexicana © Alejandro Cartagena

Alejandro Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. He received his Masters in Visual Arts from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon. Alejandro has exhibited internationally and is in the collections of SFMOMA, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museo de Arte Moderno and the Fototeca Nacional. He received the Critical Mass Book Award in 2009 for his series Suburbia Mexicana and was named a FOAM Magazine Talent in 2012. He was recently interviewed by Megan King for our Contemporary Photographer Series (CPS).

How did you first become interested in photography?

I came to photography by chance. I started taking photo workshops and loved the process of photography. I had been working in the hospitality industry for 11 years and I just quit everything and got started in doing photography as a way of life.

Who are some artists who have influenced you and how have they affected your work?

That would be a very long list. I think now I feel that it's been bodies of work more than specific artists and their whole work, but certainly a couple were very much turning points in the way I thought about looking at how to make a project or how to think photographically. I would say Paul Graham, Eugenio Espino Barros and Robert Adams are some of the photographers I feel I've learned the most from.

from the series Beyond Borders © Alejandro Cartagena

I've read in a couple of interviews that you love music, you've studied it, and have an interest in how the form in music relates to the visual in its abstractness. How has this recognition affected the work you make?

Yes, I am a big music fan. If I where to put it in words I'd say my work is becoming more like a progressive rock song, where rhythm, melodies and sequence change (sometimes drastically) but it is all united by one theme. I like the possibility of modulating from "style to style" in the photography I make. It keeps thing very much in suspense, at least for me.

Living and studying in the U.S., I am familiar with the large community of photographers here and how we network and share what we are working on. Is there a large community of contemporaries that you correspond with in Mexico?

Yes, at least the last 2 generations of photographers have become a big community. We have a national photography grant system which creates big networks every year and also for me teaching workshops has allowed me to connect with a lot of younger photographers. I try to really keep up with my peers and younger creators to promote their work whenever I can.

from the series Urban Transportation © Alejandro Cartagena

Your series Car Poolers contains photographs of workers en route to the location of their worksite. Visually, the structure between Car Poolers and Urban Transportation is the same, however, Urban Transportation does not include workers. Can you tell me about the relationship between these two bodies of work?

For me, Car Poolers is about the unintended consequences of suburbia on people's everyday life. This is how they are surviving the suburbs. In Urban Transportation, I am looking for a way to talk about how a city is conformed but by looking at how people transport themselves and everyday objects: garbage, funeral flowers, dogs, etc. One is making the invisible visible and the other is creating an idea of place through a transportation system.

from the series Car Poolers © Alejandro Cartagena

You're based in Mexico, you've lived there a good portion of your life, and your work reflects that, however, I'm curious how your work is perceived in Mexico in comparison to other parts of the world?

It's really hard to tell and it's putting me on the spot to sound self-centered. But that being said, I guess I would say I am not very much appreciated as a photographer in Latin America, especially because I tend to use a way of image making that shies away from the typical photojournalist aesthetic. Or maybe it's that the portion of the subjects I address are atypical; if I look at the border I look for cultural issues not violence; if I look at the city I look for 5 things at the same time instead of one simplistic and direct observation. This I feel upsets people and I see it when I get discarded from group shows, grants or prizes here. But then again, maybe I am being too self-centered...

from the series Born in the USA © Alejandro Cartagena