Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12
Photo courtesy of David C. Oberman

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12
Photo courtesy of David C. Oberman

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
2011-12

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Carpoolers

In 2011, Alejandro Cartagena stood atop a bridge running across the highway between Nuevo Laredo and Texas—a lucrative drug corridor between Mexico and the US. From that elevated vantage point, he photographed the many trucks that drove by on their way south to Monterrey, carrying labourers to worksites in the newly built suburbs. These vignettes, capturing a scene rarely visible, manage to straddle public and private space.

The Monterrey suburbs are a site of growing inequality between the rich and poor, and a dangerous battleground for the drug wars fuelled by the uneven distribution of wealth. The temptation for people living in poverty to engage in the drug trade is great, but the workers riding in the backs of these trucks would rather risk their safety and the chance of traffic violations for the opportunity to make an honest living in a society faced with increasing dishonesty.

The pickup truck beds in Cartagena’s photographs appear highly composed, mimicking historically painterly tableaux such as those of medieval altarpieces. The shallow depth of field and framing provided by the trucks’ walls further act to counter the fast-moving and snapshot-like nature of his images.

Conceptualized as one layer of a lifelong project, Cartagena’s Carpoolers (2011–12) series makes visible one more space between major points on the urban power grid.

The Waterfront Station is curated by Capture Photography Festival.

 


 

For the multi-sited public art project On and Off the Road, Capture has installed photo-based artworks on the exteriors of Canada Line stations across Vancouver. The series broadly considers how modes of mass transportation can simultaneously be places of intense control while remaining emblems of freedom and adventure in the Western pop cultural imagination. The artworks consider the road narrative in modern and contemporary art, literature, and film, as well as the limits of that narrative and the need for alternatives.

Presented in partnership by
Capture Photography Festival and the Canada Line Public Art Program—InTransit BC

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