ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA
The Car Poolers; personal project
While shooting an assignment on the ways Mexicans use their streets, Alejandro Cartagena noticed construction workers stowing away in the beds of pickup trucks from the suburbs of Monterrey to the city of San Pedro. “I wanted to photograph the unintended consequences of suburbia in Mexico,” says Cartagena, who made these images while perched on highway overpasses. “If they didn’t travel like this, they’d be taking many buses and arriving late for work.” Cartagena enjoyed the voyeuristic aspect of this project: “They’re doing intimate things right in public; more than half of the guys are sleeping. But if you’re at street level, you would never know. I’m exposing the invisible.” Cartagena is not the only one who found these perspectives fascinating. “The photo series went viral on the Internet,” he says. “The work has been shown in galleries. Car bloggers have picked up on it. People embrace these images and relate to them.”
© Alejandro Cartagena
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