#carpoolers

[colonellickburger]

Alejandro Cartagena. Carpoolers X, Mexico, 2011–2012

[lascitasdelashoras]

Alex Cartagena - Carpoolers

[dxtl]

Carpoolers. Alejandro Cartagena, 2012.

[slidersdimension]

What's YOUR favorite tv series with @mrjerryoc (except #Sliders)? #jerryoconnell #actor #tv #series #tvshow #crossingjordan #carter #mysecretidentity #screamqueens #thelibrarians #thedefenders #carpoolers #campwilder #blackandwhitephoto #blackandwhite

[larmagazine]

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#Alejandro Cartagena @alexcartagenamex #carpoolers #interactive #game for #LARMAGAZINE.016 #pastissues #contemporaryart #app #magazine #digitalpublishing #revista de#artecontemporaneo #interactiva para #ipads y #tablets

[attnjake]

My Carpool Buddy

[pat-mccray]

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[landscape-stories]

By Stella Belonwu, 2012

LS 24 | Road 

Alejandro Cartagena - Carpoolers

www.landscapestories.net

What inspired your latest project Car Poolers? What was your process?

Many things inspired this project but it was especially interested in continuing an exploration of issues or unintended consequences stemming out of the overdevelopment of the Mexican suburbs. The images came about while producing a commission for a research institute on how people use the street in Monterrey. That led me to observe many things of street life. When I was pursuing images of traffic jams in several mayor highways I came across several of these workers and shot a coule of images of them. Back in my studio I realized that the images had something I could pursue. Still, I put the images off for a couple of months until I had thought a bit more off what they where about, or how they would relate to my past works of Suburbia Mexicana and Landscape as Bureaucracy. Once I felt I had a strong connection to the story, the interrelationships with what I´ve been exploring in my past works I started going once or twice a week to photograph these workers on their way to work early in the morning. I would stay around 2 hours and sometimes get just a couple of images I liked and many cut, blurred or underexposed images. It was a slow processes. I wanted not to shoot more than 2 images per truck in order to keep myself very attentive and not just rely on my camera to get the frame. After a year I´ve arrived at around 120 good images of which I´ve narrowed down to 50 to be shown in publications and my galleries.

Can you talk more about your personal connection to your projects?

My work is always something very personal in levels I don´t usually express as they are maybe transparent to what is actually there. Either through picturing landscapes or people I am still looking for a connection to a country and city that is not mine and to which I was brought into. So in respect every project is almost always a new unconscious act to accept a part of who I´ve become. Also on the carpoolers project in particular, the act of getting construction workers together to hitch a ride with the “maestro” or boss is something I saw with my grandfather every time I´d come to Mexico. He was a construction worker, but was lucky enough to have his own truck, so he´d get the guys to show at his house early in the morning or he´d pick up random guys off the corners where many of them gathered to find work for the day. I had seen, it was just this changed perspective of the birds eye view, the shift towards a social unrest in the city, the uncontrollable development of the suburbs and the lack of proper transportation for all these sites that made it much more relevant to document.