Santo Domingo, 1977
Alejandro Cartagena is a Mexican artist born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban and environmental issues.
His work has been exhibited internationally in spaces including the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris and the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona.
Publications · Alejandro is a self publisher and co-editor and has created several award winning titles including Santa Barbara Shame on US, Skinnerboox, 2017, A Guide to Infrastructure and Corruption, The velvet Cell, 2017, Rivers of Power, Newwer, 2016, Santa Barbara return Jobs to US, Skinnerboox, 2016, Headshots, Self-published, 2015, Before the War, Self-published, 2015, Carpoolers, Self-published with support of FONCA Grant, 2014, Suburbia Mexicana, Daylight/ Photolucida 2010. Some of his books are in the Yale University Library, the Tate Britain, and the 10×10 Photobooks/MFH Houston book collections among others. He has published work in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Nowness, Domus, the Financial Times, and Wallpaper.
Awards · Cartagena has received several awards including the international Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, and the Lente Latino Award in Chile, the Premio IILA-FotoGrafia Award in Rome. He has been named an International Discoveries of the FotoFest festival, a FOAM magazine TALENT and an Emerging photographer of PDN magazine. He has also been a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Award and has been nominated for the Santa Fe Photography Prize, the Prix Pictet Prize, the Photoespaña Descubrimientos Award and the FOAM Paul Huff Award.
Collections · Cartagena’s work is part of the collection of the SFMOMA in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Portland Museum of Art, JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Harry Ransom Center at UT Texas and the Eastman Museum in Rochester NY and among many others.
