In the back of a navy blue pickup truck, an older man lays flat with arms and legs spread like a starfish. His face is turned up to the sky—he’s fast asleep. It’s one of the first photographs visitors encounter in Alejandro Cartagena’s exhibition “Ground Rules” at SFMOMA (through April 19).
The image is part of Cartagena’s ”Carpoolers” series, which was photographed from 2011 to 2012 and figures prominently in the SFMOMA show. In it, Cartagena captured everyday people traveling in the back of pickup trucks in Monterrey, Mexico, the country’s second-largest metropolitan area after Mexico City.
The photos were shot from a bird’s eye view, looking down from a freeway overpass. In the photos, day laborers, families, and kids in the back of a truck bed share food, sleeping and relaxing on either end of a long day of work. Over a decade later, the images of ”Carpoolers” are still in heavy circulation on social media.
“I didn’t think that people would resonate with the images,” Cartagena said in a recent interview with El Tecolote and 48 Hills.
He shot the photo series in order to capture Monterrey in a different light. Cartagena explained how being in the same place at the same time for a whole year allowed him to follow the same people as the seasons changed.
“To have the representation of everyday life, of workers surviving,” he said. “That was something that I wanted to represent and convey, in that moment of so much pain that my country was going through.”
During the period in which “Carpoolers” was shot, Monterrey experienced extreme violence due to armed conflict between the Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.
The photographer was born in the Dominican Republic in 1977 and moved to Monterrey in 1990. By 2011, when he began his most famous series, he had become interested in highlighting the everyday people whose existence was being overshadowed by the cartel war. It was a tough undertaking—at times, he found himself wanting to quit.
Today, Cartagena appreciates how the series allows people to see the real functioning of a busy, chaotic city. His photos not only capture a moment of people’s lives, but also that of Monterrey.
“It became a story of how a city works, and how you have this repetition,” he said. “Because we’re always moving, it feels like there’s chaos, but if you stand still, you see these patterns.”
Visiting the exhibit the day of his interview was Netanya Buenrostro, a 22-year-old student at the California College of the Arts, who is Mexican and Guatemalan. “I wanted to come support another Latino artist, and see their artwork. It really inspired me,” she said. Cartagena’s work made Buenrostro feel at home. When she entered the exhibit, it spoke to her own lived experience, of seeing her family come home tired after a long day working in construction.
Another visitor, Andres Ruiz, is a 26-year-old, first-generation Mexican American born in San Francisco. He lives and works in San Bruno as a barber. Like many, Ruiz first saw the “Carpoolers” series online when it went viral. He said that he found viewing the photos in-person to be very powerful, and that they reflected his own family life, too.
“It triggers some kind of emotion that I don’t think people who aren’t growing up Mexican or Latin understand. They can appreciate it, but they don’t understand the actual emotions behind it. And so for me to see these photos, I see my tías, I see my tíos, I see my primos. It just invokes a lot of pain, joy, and pride in my culture and in my people.”
Online, people have raised privacy concerns in relation to the “Carpoolers” series. However, not everyone believes the photos to be controversial. Kota Borsdorf, another first-generation Mexican-American who had came to SFMOMA with her boyfriend Desmond Long to celebrate her 26th birthday, said, “I feel like if the pictures have been around that long, and nothing bad has come of it, it’s probably fine.
“Obviously, if they did have any bad impact, that would be important to consider. But I think that it’s more important that these pictures are shown to the public and people see them. You can’t always hide what reality looks like.”
Buenrostro said she doesn’t feel like the photos should be considered controversial. “I think [their subjects] feel honored to be represented in such a way,” she shared. “I think it’s really cool.”
ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: GROUND RULES runs through April 19. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Tickets and more info here.
