Louise Alexander Gallery, Porto Cervo
Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers
Jun 5 - Aug 27, 2025
Overview
“Resisting sentimentality, Cartagena’s series operates as a typology, emphasizing the ubiquity of these carpoolers rather than telling any one of their stories. Divested of their individuality through Cartagena’s clinical approach, as well as their conflation with so many other implements of labor, the men confined to these shallow boxes become almost interchangeable.“
- Jessica S. McDonald
Photographer Alejandro Cartagena created this series of images by waiting on a bridge, pointing his camera down to the road below to capture Mexican carpoolers on their way to work.
The result is an incredibly moving series of photographs that capture what is usually left unseen.
Using the vantage point of the freeway overpass, Cartagena turns his camera lens to the workers travelling in the back of pick-up trucks, moving invisibly across the city.
While the workers may not know it, their need to carpool also has an unexpected outcome - saving time and money also reduces traffic and fossil fuels in the city, and they become silent contributors to the environment and the preservation of the planet.