Born in the Dominican Republic, Alejandro Cartagena (1977) now lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. There, he photographs the particularities of the relatively new and often hastily built Mexican suburbs, which reflect a general disregard for planning. Over the years, as already meticulously documented by Livia Corona (who received a Guggenheim fellowship for her photography book project Two Million Homes for Mexico in 2009), various governmental policies resulted in new, decentralised cities with limited infrastructure, where the pursuit of immediate financial gain trumped any interest in sustainability. Cartagena captures both the destruction that rapid urbanisation has imposed on the landscape and the phenomenon of densely packed housing. This type of urbanisation prototype, now prevalent in Mexico, marks a profound change in the shaping of our experience as citizens of a broader world.

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