In Suburban Bus (2016), Cartagena turns his lens to the intimate, daily rhythms of commuting, further humanizing the fallout of Mexico’s suburban sprawl. This series documents the arduous journey of blue-collar workers traveling between the rapidly expanding suburb of Juárez (on Monterrey’s periphery) and the urban core . Cartagena himself rode these public buses for over a decade in his youth, witnessing firsthand as Juárez’s population more than doubled between 2000 and 2005 and new housing developments pushed ever farther from the city center . A dozen years later, now an established photographer, he retraced that route with his camera, determined to capture the experience shared by thousands of Mexicans each day  . The conceptual focus of Suburban Bus is on mobility and its discontents: how unplanned urban growth translates into long, uncomfortable commutes, strained infrastructure, and a daily negotiation of personal and collective space. By situating us inside a crowded bus – a “metal creature” sweltering in 40°C heat – Cartagena shines a light on an often invisible social reality: the cost in time, dignity, and safety that working-class residents bear in pursuit of a better life on the city’s fringes . (Notably, public transport in Monterrey is notoriously inadequate and even unsafe; an alarming 91.6% of women report experiencing sexual harassment on buses . Such context heightens the urgency behind Cartagena’s inquiry, even as these details remain implicit in his images.)

Visually and structurally, Suburban Bus is both documentary and experiential. Cartagena sequenced the photographs to mirror a single day’s commute: the series opens in predawn darkness as the first passengers board and closes with weary riders returning at night . This day-in-the-life approach provides a narrative arc – from the dim, hushed morning departures through the bright chaos of midday and finally to the shadowed ride home – embodying a full cycle of labor. Within this framework, Cartagena employs an inventive range of compositional strategies . His camera roams with a restless, empathetic eye, alternating between looking outward and inward, much like a bored passenger gazing out the window then back inside the bus. We see what Cartagena sees: headlights illuminating faces through the front windshield at dawn, then the interior glow of flickering fluorescents on commuters nodding off in their seats . As daylight grows, he peers out at the world beyond the bus: a fiery orange sunrise filtered through a half-drawn window shade, silhouettes of lone figures waiting at empty curbside stops, and rows of “cookie-cutter housing developments” in pastel hues punctuating the suburbs . These exterior scenes remind us of the sprawling urban plan (or lack thereof) that underpins each journey – identical houses stretching into the distance, some unfinished with rebar piercing the sky . Then, back inside, the bus fills to capacity. Cartagena’s vantage shifts: he now stands in the aisle, capturing the press of bodies and the choreography of commuting. By pairing shots taken seconds apart, he documents subtle shifts as passengers squeeze past each other or grasp the overhead rail, a sequence of small negotiations in cramped quarters  . The camera lingers on telling details – a brightly colored backpack, a hand clutching a bar, a half-open newspaper – and on faces lost in daydream or exhaustion. This stream-of-consciousness flow of images “mimics the feeling of being on a long boring bus ride”, with Cartagena’s attention flitting from the mundane to the monumental and back . The effect is remarkably immersive: viewers come to feel the slow passage of time, the jostle of motion, and the mix of tedium and community that defines the commute.

Situated within Cartagena’s broader oeuvre, Suburban Bus extends his critique of urban inequality while celebrating the resilience of everyday people. It serves as a companion piece to his earlier Carpoolers series (2011–2012), which famously looked down from a highway overpass onto pickup trucks full of laborers . However, Suburban Bus shifts perspective – from a distant, top-down view of transit to an embedded, human-scale experience inside public transport. This inward gaze amplifies the series’ socio-political commentary: by making the viewer a virtual passenger, Cartagena underscores the dignity and adversity of those who literally carry the weight of suburban expansion. The project culminated in a photobook (Suburban Bus, The Velvet Cell, 2021) spanning hundreds of color photographs , presented as one continuous visual ride. The work has also entered institutional collections, a testament to its impact – for instance, a set of Suburban Bus images was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, affirming the series’ importance as a document of contemporary urban life . Above all, Suburban Bus stands as a politically charged elegy for those left in transit: it makes visible the otherwise overlooked daily voyage of Mexico’s working class, asking us to consider mobility itself as a fundamental social justice issue .