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.

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.

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

suburbia mexicana on Esquire Russia

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



link

to start the year a solo exhibition in guatemala

collective show in nicaragua

Opening of Pictures of the year international in Los Angeles

Opening of Pictures of the year international at the Annenberg Space for Photography.

Participating Photographers:

* Philip Scott Andrews
* Guillermo Arias
* Nadia Benchallal
* Alejandro Cartagena
* Peter DiCampo
* Yvette Marie Dostani
* Danny Wilcox Frazier
* Toni Greaves
* Cathy Greenblat
* Mark Edward Harris
* Henry Jacobson
* Tom Leininger
* Karen Quincy Loberg
* Eric Lusito
* Amy Lyne
* Hector Mediavilla
* Claire Martin
* Alessandra Quadri
* Brijesh Patel
* Ray Ramos
* Jason Reblando
* Jerry Redfern
* David Taylor
* John Tully
* Munem Wasif

border 2010

Estare participando en la exposicion Border 2010, a two man exhibition at UTEP's Rubin Center, El Paso Texas. more info here

lost river became alive

after hurricane alex

suburbia mexicana at bluesky gallery in portland

foward thinking museum, Rachel Wolff

Suburban Sprawl

Turning his lens on the now-residential areas immediately outside of Monterrey, Mexico, Alejandro Cartagena elegantly documents the ways in which contemporary northeast Mexico – with its rows upon rows of boxy uniform houses – is starting to look a whole lot like post-World War II suburban U.S.A. more here

reviewing the archive. 3 blocks in diffrent stages of construction

cartagena in suburbia mexicana

after 3 years of taking pictures in the suburbs of monterrey`s metro area, finally someone noticed my work and decided to name a street after me... just kidding! this is a suburb where all streets have names of Spanish cities. it felt good to find this though!!

disconnected

i had to disconnect from the blogsphere for these past weeks. i have started teaching at the university of nuevo leon plus doing my masters degree... things are tight and wild! i will keep posting as much as i can. feeling in the teacher/promoter mood i´d like to call out to photo students to send me images or links to their sites. what is happening out there right now? lets see it...

interview over at mull it over by jonathan cherry

read it here

some pictures of solo show suburbia mexicana @ galeria de la ciudad, aguascalientes, mexico

pictures by Lourdes Valdez

ricardo martinez roa y fernando gomez: maquetas y miradas, curaduria de domingo valdivieso y alejandro cartagena

suburbia mexicana opens september 8th in guatemala city

more info on the show and festival here

division del norte: a border community in reynosa mexico

i have spent the last few weeks working on a project in northern mexico.





this community lives close to the US border and to drug dealers which they call "mañosos".





it strikes me how they have decided to stick to a "normal" rural life instead of joining the immigrant or drug cartel statistics.

distopia opens tomorrow at robert koch gallery

Benoit Aquin



nadav kander



richard gordon



edward burtynsky



michael wolf



alejandro cartagena



brian ulrich




colin finlay




Matthias Geiger



shai kremer




ken botto