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"I first took a picture a year and a half before this final one. First they cleared all of the trees and bushes so they could dig holes for utilities and pave the zone. I took this final picture once they had filled the area with houses." —Alejandro Cartagena
Editorial Statement The photographs in Lost Rivers by Alejandro Cartagena (b. 1977), which are part of a larger body of work entitled Suburbia Mexicana: Cause and Effect, interrogate the interdependence of humans and landscape in the face of urban expansion. Although artists and activists alike have placed intense focus on the negative impact of urban sprawl since the 1960s, Cartagena's work is unique in its preoccupation with the subtler effects of suburban expansion, largely overlooked but indicative of significant, irrevocable change within a local ecosystem. The city of Monterrey, at the heart of the Mexican state of Nuevo León, is the third largest city in Mexico, with a population of 3.8 million in the metropolitan region. As Monterrey's population expands outward from the city center, increased demand for water has necessitated the reallocation of the region's limited resources. Cartagena explains that, in the last twenty years, many local rivers and streams were "rerouted to dams to supply water for the nine cities of the metropolitan area of Monterrey, or have dried out as suburbia's approximately 300,000 new houses move closer, destroying vegetation that sheltered and preserved the riverbeds' running water." The images in Lost Rivers provide explicit evidence of botched urban development and inadequate economic policy, even as they reveal the beauty to be found within the spoiled landscapes... JB Alejandro Cartegena (b. 1977) lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His work has been exhibited and published internationally. Alejandro Cartagena was awarded one of two Critical Mass Book Award by Photolucida in 2009. |
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