New York Book Launch and Signing | Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules

Overview

About the Guests

Overview

Join Aperture and Printed Matter in celebrating the launch of Alejandro 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. Cartagena will be available to sign books.

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.

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Image: Alejandro Cartagena, from the series Landscape as Bureaucracy, 2010–13, from Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules (Aperture, 2025)

About the Guests

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.