With Photographic Structures (2019–2020), Cartagena departs from straight documentation and enters the realm of conceptual, process-driven art – while maintaining his focus on Mexico’s social landscape. This series (titled Photo Structure / Foto Estructura in exhibition form) originated from an act of artistic archaeology: Cartagena scavenged in landfills on the outskirts of Mexico City, salvaging thousands of discarded vernacular photographs – family portraits, snapshots, tourist prints – that had been thrown away. These found photographs, once intimate records of individual lives, became the raw material for a new kind of visual inquiry. In his studio, Cartagena meticulously excises figures, faces, and key subjects from the salvaged photos and then rearranges or recontextualizes the fragments within the original images. Sometimes he shifts a cut-out figure to a different spot; other times he removes a person entirely, leaving a ghostly absence. The resulting collages (often produced as unique altered silver-gelatin prints) are paradoxically both disorienting and strangely complete. By slicing into the photograph’s very structure, Cartagena asks us to consider what truly constitutes an image’s meaning. How much can be taken away before a picture’s essence is lost? What stories emerge when incidental background details become central, or when the main subject vanishes? In Photographic Structures, these questions are foregrounded through compelling visuals: anonymous people appear duplicated or missing in group portraits; a wedding snapshot might show only the surrounding guests in focus, the bride and groom excised. Yet the compositions remain eerily legible and familiar, as if the DNA of the photograph persists without its “heroes.” This technique reveals, with conceptual clarity, that the seemingly crucial elements of an image can be both central and incidental to our understanding. Cartagena’s fractured images thus prompt a double-take, sharpening our awareness of how context, memory, and narrative are constructed in photography.

Conceptually, Photographic Structures bridges personal memory and collective history. The choice of Mexican found photos from the late 20th century situates the work in a socio-political context: these forgotten images speak to the transient nature of analogue memories in the digital age, and to a broader culture of disposability. In Mexico – as elsewhere – family photo albums are being discarded in the rush of modernization, whether due to urban migration, home loss, or simply the passage of generations. Cartagena’s recovery and transformation of these lost archives can be seen as an act of cultural preservation twisted into critique. By literally reconstructing photographs, he is also reconstructing overlooked narratives of ordinary Mexicans, albeit in a deliberately ambiguous way. Importantly, this series also reflects Cartagena’s engagement with the history of the medium itself. In earlier projects he rephotographed or referenced existing images (for instance, rethinking how suburbia had been depicted by prior photographers), but here he physically intervenes in vintage prints – a nod to Dadaist collage and contemporary photo appropriation practices. The “structures” in the title refer not only to the compositional frameworks he builds, but also to the underlying structures of meaning, value, and identity in photography. Visually, the works often retain a nostalgic patina – the faded colors or monochrome tones of old snapshots – which Cartagena then disrupts with cuts and splices, creating a jarring interplay of past and present.

Debuted in 2020, Photographic Structures marked a bold evolution in Cartagena’s practice and garnered significant institutional recognition. The series premiered as an exhibition co-organized by the George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY) and the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA), with Cartagena creating new pieces specifically for the show. Titled Photo Structure / Foto Estructura, the exhibition invited viewers to contemplate these altered photographs up close, often accompanied by an audio tour with the artist’s insights. Critics noted that the work compels the audience to consider “what gives a photograph meaning”, since even after drastic alterations the images feel “strangely whole and strikingly familiar”. Following its run at the Eastman (Jan–June 2020) and Chrysler (Aug 2020–Jan 2021) museums, the series solidified Cartagena’s reputation as an artist who can move fluidly between social documentary and conceptual experimentation. A number of pieces from Photographic Structures have entered prominent collections, such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (which acquired Grupos Recortados #65, a cut-photograph work from the series, in 2019). Through this project, Cartagena demonstrates that his socio-political concerns – identity, memory, the fate of communities – can be powerfully addressed by reconstructing reality, not just photographing it. Photographic Structures is, in essence, a meditation on photography’s double life: as tangible object (prone to decay and disposal) and as image-symbol (loaded with mutable meanings). Cartagena’s cut-and-reassembled photographs pay homage to lives and moments otherwise consigned to the trash heap, while also challenging us to reflect on how photographs function as cultural “things” that we create, manipulate, and abandon.