Friday, December 2, 2011

Suburbia Mexicana Book Available in Mexico and Europe

Finalmente están disponibles mis libros de Suburbia Mexicana en México vía mi sitio web y paypal. Hay una versión estándar y una firmada con una foto 8x10 edición de 100 incluida http://alejandrocartagena.com/books/ Espero se animen a apoyar este proyecto y que a su vez disfruten de este libro que me costo 4 años de mi vida.

Monday, November 21, 2011

living in subrbia



these are some of the several short videos i did for the landscape as beaurocracy project. it was much fun doing moving images.



a little about the project: landscape as bureaucracy is an exploration of the underlying structures surrounding the dream of owning a house in xxi century mexico. for the past 3 years i have documented several aspects of this constructed dream; the public institutions involved in the acquisition of houses in mexico (infonavit), the people´s pursuit for their mortgage loan, the bureaucrats who demand requisites and decide who gets or not awarded a loan, and the private companies and their merchandising strategies to lure people into debt. in between all of this, stands the case of my older brother david, who for the past 8 years has been pursuing a loan for a house through all of the above parties. symbolically, it is the power and conviction of people’s dreams; both of the soon to be homeowners and of the public and private bureaucrats that pushes the natural landscape to become an urban and suburban space. it seems to me, that landscape as an idea is as much the actual scenario as it is the social, political and economical forces that conform and eventually transform it.

Friday, October 28, 2011

new commission work: contract city






more images here

ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA about the battle over the city of Costa Mesa’s budget. Costa Mesa has no apparent center: if there’s a there here, it’s unclear where. What served as a civic nucleus, until recently, was City Hall. The five-story glass-and-white-brick box is home to many of the municipality’s four hundred and ninety-seven employees. But City Hall is now under fire from the budget-slashing wing of the Republican establishment, in a war of words and pink slips reminiscent of an earlier anti-union era, when the Pinkertons battered the Wobblies with fists and clubs. Local budget deficits are a national problem. Cities are where people will actually feel the results of the argument over the country’s fiscal future, and American cities are running deficits of some fourteen billion dollars a year. One glaring contributor to the problem is growing pension payments. Cities can’t look to their states for help: a recent study estimated that there was a $1.26-trillion funding gap in state workers’ retirement benefits, countrywide (with California responsible for an eighth of that). Read more

Friday, August 19, 2011

alejandro cartagena | One Life Photos 2011

If you have a chance take a look at my images from suburbia mexicans here.
alejandro cartagena | One Life Photos 2011

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

death in arizona: tin dirdamal



tin, a beloved friend of my is pursuing the conclusion of his new project through kickstarter. please lend him a hand and help this project find completion. more information here

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

diego kuffer

an interesting approach to collage, fragmentation and movement. the portfolio here


Monday, July 25, 2011

mauricio alejo

i remember seeing mauricio present his work back in 2004 at an event called fotoguanajuato. i had never seen anything like it. his videos and photographs are crafted in very simple ways, making things look so "natural" and "clean". this attracts me very munch making me over and over want to be fooled by what i am seeing. a link to bransch with a lot of his work.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Noorderlicht 2011 photofestival. Metropolis - City Life in the Urban Age.

Participating Photographers Noorderlicht 2011

More than 80 photographers from all over the world are participating in Metropolis - City Life in the Urban Age.

Abir Abdullah
Evan Abramson
Martin Adolfsson
Anas Al-Shaikh
Mehraneh Atashi
Pablo Balbontín & Luca Marinelli
Giorgio Barrera
Matteo Bastianelli
Nina Berman
Peter Bialobrzeski
Jodi Bieber
Julio Bittencourt
Kendrick Brinson
Giacomo Brunelli
Gregory Buchakjian
Estan Cabigas
Alejandro Cartagena
Fracilins Castilho Leal
Carlos Cazalis
Tiane Doan na Champassak
Rasel Chowdhury
Xavier Comas
Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge
Alain Delorme
Manal Al Dowayan
Stephen Dupont
Brad Farwell
Andreas Gefeller
Ugnius Gelguda
Reinier Gerritsen
Christoph Gielen
Ashley Gilbertson
Paul Gofferjé
Nadja Groux
Kai Uwe Gundlach
Pawel Jaszczuk
Jian Jiang
Gabriel Jones
Nadav Kander
Yannis Karpouzis
Gareth Kingdon
Thomas Kneubühler
Katrin Koenning
Laura Konttinen
Marcus Koppen
Maros Krivy
Ikuru Kuwajima
Selvaprakash Lakshmanan
Gina LeVay
Sebastian Liste
Martin Luijendijk
Sayed Asif Mahmud
Yves Marchant & Romain Meffre
Massimo Mastrorillo
Andreas Meichsner
Cecile Mella
Jean-Marc Meunier
Ivan Mikhaylov
Guillaume Millet
Andreas Müller-Pohle
Michael Najjar
Matthew Niederhauser
Simon Norfolk
Sherman Ong
Louie Palu
Max Pam
Ohm Phanphiroj
Olivier Pin-Fat
Dana Popa
Martin Roemers
Edith Roux
Carlos Sanchez & Jason Sanchez
Hans-Christian Schink
Darren Soh
Elian Somers
Will Steacy
Niels Stomps
Franky Verkickt
Munem Wasif
Shen Wei
Hans Wilschut
Michael Wolf
Devin Yalkin
Pablo Ziccarello
Kim Zwarts

the chain project

'The Chain' is the latest project curated by Stuart Pilkington, (curator of The Alphabet Project and the 50 States Project).

Stuart invited 107 photographers from around the globe to participate in the project at the beginning of 2011.

And in February 2011 each photographer submitted a title/instruction to inspire a photograph by another person in the project. The photographers were connected like links in a chain. They were asked to respond to the title set by the person directly behind them. The title they set was directed to the photographer directly in front of them. see the whole chain here



'Empathy' (set by Paul Plews)



'It seems I've lost my way' (set by Alejandro Cartagena)

yann gross. a photo project that helps out



support the project here

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

everything is a remix


Everything is a Remix por partipirate

by Kirby Ferguson

suburbia mexicana on Esquire Russia

Мексиканец Алехандро Картахена (Alejandro Cartagena) сделал серию фотографий одного из новых пригородов Монтеррея.



link

de seguridad y otras mamadas. ocupamos más gente hablando.

antony crossfield



Long time no see!! Life has been hectic and the seductiveness of the immediacy of Facebook has made me to stay away from this blog. But I will not give in! so here is a great and refreshing photographer to look at to start off the summer posts. Finally something interesting being done with the 360 panorama shtick.



©antony crossfield

Monday, April 4, 2011

Thursday, March 31, 2011

francisco larios





no link to a personal page. but do a google search and you can find info on this mexican artist. a cv here

the best art work in the world by ruben gutierrez (update: and the best song in the world, tenacious d) (2nd update: the greatest man that ever lived)

the best art work in the world from ruben gutierrez on Vimeo.





Thursday, March 24, 2011

nuestra mirada


un buen lugar para encontrar fotografía latinoamericana.

Lost Rivers Portofolio at Places: Design Observer

As Places photography editor Aaron Rothman, who curated both portfolios, says, "Lost Rivers depicts places poised between loss and beauty, acknowledging the price of urbanization while seeking to reclaim a sense of connection with these natural spaces."
The whole article here



Founded 28 years ago by architecture faculty at MIT and Berkeley, Places is an interdisciplinary journal of contemporary architecture, landscape and urbanism, with particular emphasis on the public realm as physical place and social ideal. In 2009 Places published its last print issue and moved online as an open-access journal in partnership with the Design Observer Group. In this new format, Places publishes peer-reviewed scholarship as well as topical commentary, observations, reviews and visual portfolios, with two new articles every week.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

amazing

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

parallel relationships



i really enjoy how contemporary images relate to past images. sometimes conscious sometimes not. the case is how we as photographers find our images touching things contained in past images and how inevitable this is today. for me these images from nadar and roger ballen relate in some weird way.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

a series of unfortunate events/michael wolf



flipping through the world press photo of 2010 i was amazed and enthusiastic about finding michael wolf´s street view images "a series of unfortunate events". Is it maybe the simplicity of the project or the "of course" factor that makes these images so strong? yes and yes. but it is also the idea, at least to me, of what photography is becoming; a way to encounter a deeper self, not by taking pictures, but by thinking about the images we look at at show to others. a big praise to this body of work.