Carpoolers #4

Cartagena's making of the photographs is one-part observation and one-part reflective labor as he hovers over his fellow countrymen and women carousing their way through the city in open-top trucks aimed for their destination of work. Both subject and author share the experience of labor and transit through Cartagena's detailed and prescient series of observations. We begin to see the growth registered through the representation of its labor through his work. In doing so, Cartagena asks us to remember that cities are built by people and not the other way around. His work challenges preconceptions about value, labor, and visibility. For this reason, Carpoolers remains a highly critical and vital body of work in which we may dissect capitalism, labor, and urban expansion in the first decades of the Twenty-First Century. This fourth volume of Carpoolers is entirely different from proceeding volumes. The emphasis of the books various volumes is in their interchangeability, their constant re-appraisal of Monterrey, and their illustration in this case of what is at the heart of Cartagena's dialogue: the Mexican people themselves. "This book was made during the pandemic. It is a miracle you have it in your hands. Conceptualized as one layer of a lifelong project, Cartagenaœs carpoolers series makes visible one more space between major points on the urban power grid.ʺ Thank you Jessica.ʺ --Page [7]