Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules

Name: Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules
Brand: Aperture
SKU: 15728
Price: 65.00 USD
Availability: InStock

$65.00

The first definitive survey of the Mexican photographer’s prolific career.

In stock

Description

A comprehensive survey of a prolific photographer who fearlessly charts the dreams and dystopias of Mexico today.

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.

Published to coincide with a mid-career solo exhibition at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, on view from November 2025 through May 2026.

Details

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 284
Number of images: 213
Publication date: 2025-11-11
Measurements: 6.69 x 9.21 x 1 inches
ISBN: 9781597115728

Contributors

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.

Tatiana Bilbao is a Mexico City–based architect and founder of Tatiana Bilbao Estudio.

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.

Horacio Fernández is a photo-historian, curator, and author of numerous books, including Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print, 1919–1939 (1999) and The Latin American Photobook (Aperture, 2011).

Charlotte Kent is associate professor of visual culture at Montclair State University, New Jersey.

Shana Lopes is assistant curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and curator of Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules.

Press

“Cartagena stretches our conceptions of suburban life in Mexico by finding universal conditions that we can relate to.”—Metal

“Seen from above, each vehicle becomes a tiny stage where men doze, unbuckled, surrendered to a vulnerability that repetition elevates into political statement.”—Blind

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Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules

$65.00