# @drawingcenter on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/ByI0h0KFkHx
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/16044642-drawingcenter-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/e288e5ff0e.jpg
- **Posted:** 2019-05-31T18:58:53.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Drawing Center (@drawingcenter) — https://gondola.cc/drawingcenter

## Caption

Artists have a variety of methods to make their mark. Every Friday we will share a photograph of an #ArtistInAction.
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Alejandro Cartagena (b. 1977) is a photographer that explores issues of urban planning, landscape, and labor in his documentarian images. Cartagena’s portraits and landscapes focus on the context in which he lives as a way to understand his surroundings. Living in Monterrey, Mexico, Cartagena uses photography to examine Latin American issues around labor, environment, and commercial development. “It is a search,” Cartagena explains, “for an understanding of the space where we live and how we are affected by such constructions. I observe and ask questions of why things look and operate the way they do. Then I photograph. I look at the pictures I do. Think if they are effective in portraying my idea. Discard, keep and shoot some more. Do that until I feel I am done.” In his series “Car Poolers” Cartagena photographed Mexican workers carpooling to work in the back of pickup trucks. The bird's eye perspective captures the workers candidly laying or sitting down while being driven to their place of work. The rectangular bed of the truck serves as a frame for the resting laborers and their tools. Cartagena says: “I would like my work to be perceived as a comment that opens up relationships that are speculative and factual at the same time.”
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#AlejandroCartagena alexcartagenamex
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Image: Video still of Alejandro Cartagena | Foco crítico,” by VICE, 2016. Courtesy of Youtube.

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## Tags

artistinaction, alejandrocartagena

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