"A Guide to Infrastructure and Corruption is a long-term project that I started in 2009 when the opportunity to become a conscious citizen arose. A new overpass was to be built a block away from my house in Monterrey, Mexico, changing the transit and flow for everyone who lived in the the immediate area. Having lived downtown since 2007, I suddenly felt that we were being affected by these new infrastructure complexes so that they could supply a quick way for people to get out of the city and into the newly built suburbs that I was photographing at the time.

These interconnections all over the city, and its personal effect on my daily life, took me on a 6 year search to document the sites and how they affect businesses and the people who live around them. This rabbit-hole took me to town meetings, urban planning conferences’ and gave me the chance to associate with people fighting for their right to the city and public space. The result is a guide that shows how the city is ever changing and how those changes come not from those affected, but from those who benefit from the contracts and investments that flow into the construction and development of such structures."

About the Photographer: 

Alejandro Cartagena, Mexican (b. 1977, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban and environmental issues. Cartagena’s work has been exhibited internationally in more than 50 group and individual exhibitions and his work is in the collections of several museums including the San Francisco MOMA, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Portland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art among others.

Published by The Velvet Cell in 2017

Limited Edition of 500

Essay by Ximena Peredo

Signed Copies

192 pages

14 x 21 cm