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By Alejandro Cartagena.
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Photographs by Alejandro Cartagena
The Velvet Cell, 2020. 360 pp., 6x9".
At its surface, A Small Guide to Homeownership is an amalgamation of related projects produced by Alejandro Cartagena in the Monterrey area of northern Mexico since 2005. The book weaves together the key elements of an expanding urban condition with all the informalities, pains and ecological follies generated from poorly-regulated growth.
Sinking below the surface, however, the book is an episodic journey. Our first foray into the work is through images of landscapes, which begins with the natural, and moves into fresh suburban developments in various states of completion. Onward, we are led to images of bustling offices, where clients and workers immerse themselves in life-altering calls; feelings of impatience and stoicism push against one another in equal measure. Next, we are shown the interiors of small homes made even smaller by internal clutter. From these suburban interiors, Cartegena centers us on cityscapes, environmental portraits, and cars abutted, before leading us to a series of nightscapes under a section titled ‘Bracing for Success’. Who and how we brace is uncertain.
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If Cartagena is a guide, he is an absentminded one. He playfully utilizes a Dummies Guide on Homeownership to not only map out a journey for us, but also to provide a space for collisions. Cartagena’s images collide, grinding against one another while contrasting tips for hopeful homeowners. The more time I’ve spent with the work, the more I realize that the images, and the text-ridden pages they are nestled within, are not simply an inked backdrop but a conversation. A conversation similar to Christian Patterson’s Bottom of the Lake or Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin’s Holy Bible, both of which build upon this emerging subgenre by appropriating common cultural texts. This is a genre that pulls from the deep-rooted history of collage and montage found in 20th Century art and film, and the ideas of Post-Photography explored most elegantly by Joan Fontcuberta in the early 21st. For Cartagena, the conversation is about action and inaction, our innate interest in bettering ourselves, and, above all else, it is about striving to meet the American Dream.
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By casting his gaze upon suburban Mexico, Cartagena invites us to think about the American Dream. On the back cover, the quote “how to mortgage your future and find happiness” speaks volumes. The critical bones in my body keep asking, when was this dream viable and for who? What Cartagena shows us, while also problematizing in the process, is that there is another way to subscribe to, bite, and devour this myth.
Over the past few years, and with growing intensity, I’ve been thinking about the American Dream. About who wins and who loses, about the distance between people and their sacred ideas of success. At its core, the American Dream is a vapid exaggeration, a rugged and merry fuck-around, a culture-wide attempt at raw boosterism. Once tested, the dream breaks into a crass contradiction, a premise as simple as: for some to succeed, others must not. Those who do not succeed must try, and try again, and again, until they rise or evaporate.
It is difficult to pinpoint A Small Guide to Homeownership’s modus operandi. The work is in the form of a journey, but one that is more of a nebula than a linear progression. As a result, we are given no answers to questions that might be raised, nor are we shown a specific way of seeing, only a topic and its many tentacles. Numerous questions circulate and compete: Are we chasing the wrong dream? Have the suburbs failed in Mexico? Are we building a ‘new’ Mexico? Not all treaties, which begin with ponderings, must end with answers. Through an information overload, Cartagena makes visible a modern crisis, and the constant anxiety that exists as its background noise. Like a conductor, he uses his images as the highs and lows, a way to both soothe and extend the perplexing feeling of a heart beating too fast, of a room made small with clutter.
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Kyler Zeleny (1988) is a Canadian photographer, educator and author of Out West (2014), Found Polaroids (2017), and Crown Ditch & The Prairie Castle (2020). He holds a masters from Goldsmiths College, in Photography and Urban Cultures and a PhD from the joint Communication & Culture program at Ryerson and York University. His work has been exhibited internationally in twelve countries and has been featured in numerous publications including The Globe & Mail, Vice, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Independent. He occupies his time by exploring photography on the Canadian prairies.
It is difficult to pinpoint A Small Guide to Homeownership’s modus operandi. The work is in the form of a journey, but one that is more of a nebula than a linear progression. As a result, we are given no answers to questions that might be raised, nor are we shown a specific way of seeing, only a topic and its many tentacles. Numerous questions circulate and compete: Are we chasing the wrong dream? Have the suburbs failed in Mexico? Are we building a ‘new’ Mexico? Not all treaties, which begin with ponderings, must end with answers. Through an information overload, Cartagena makes visible a modern crisis, and the constant anxiety that exists as its background noise. Like a conductor, he uses his images as the highs and lows, a way to both soothe and extend the perplexing feeling of a heart beating too fast, of a room made small with clutter.
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