A Good-Humored Act of Resistance: Alejandro Cartagena and Álvaro Enrigue
Join Aperture and the Photography Program at Parsons School of Design at the New School for a special conversation between artist and editor Alejandro Cartagena and writer Álvaro Enrigue. The two will discuss Cartagena’s new monograph, Ground Rules (Aperture, 2025).
Ground Rules is the first comprehensive, fully bilingual survey charting the career of the prolific photographer Alejandro Cartagena. Celebrated for his photobooks Carpoolers (2014) and A Small Guide to Homeownership (2020), Cartagena is known for his formally engaging and socially incisive images that span the politics of the US-Mexico border, suburban sprawl, and the increasing wealth disparities in North America. Ground Rules deploys a diverse array of photographic formats, from documentary and collage to the appropriation of vernacular photographs and AI-generated imagery, all unified by Cartagena’s commitment to addressing Mexico’s most pressing social and environmental issues with humor and pathos.
—
Image: Alejandro Cartagena, from the series An Invisible Line, 2010–17, from Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules (Aperture, 2025)
Alejandro Cartagena (born in 1977, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) is an artist and editor whose projects employ landscape and portraiture to examine social, urban, and environmental issues. Cartagena’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where his mid-career survey, Ground Rules, is presented in 2025; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York; Patricia Conde Galería, Mexico City; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. His work is in the collections of museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; George Eastman Museum; and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California.
Álvaro Enrigue is a Mexican writer based in New York and an associate professor of romance languages and literatures at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.
You may also like
Tracing Africa’s Photographic History in Books
The curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo speaks about Africa’s political transformations and the role of publishing in shaping artistic knowledge.
Martin Parr Led a Global Movement for Photography
As both an acclaimed photographer and an impassioned advocate for the medium, Parr’s influence on the field has been immeasurable.