Photographer Alejandro Cartagena has taken the theme of suburban sprawl to a new level of visualization and power in a body of work entitled Suburbia Mexicana: Cause and Effect. Shot over period of three years in his hometown of Monterrey, Mexico, the series focuses on disruption to the landscape, both physical and social, that has occurred as a result of overbuilding.

Since 2001, the city has been transformed due to contradicting policies that have allowed developers to build more than 300,000 new houses in the metropolitan region. Cartagena has recorded these monumental changes, with a vision that both heroic and poignant.

Left: Opening night at Jen Bekman; photograph: Peggy Roalf. Right: Untitled, from Suburbia Mexicana Project by Alejandro Cartagena; copyright the artist, courtesy Jen Bekman.

Cartagena explains that, in the last twenty years, many local rivers and streams were "rerouted to dams to supply water for the nine cities of the metropolitan area of Monterrey, or have dried out as suburbia's new houses move closer, destroying vegetation that sheltered and preserved the riverbeds' running water."

In a race to put up cheap housing fast, the landscape has been urbanized before plans for efficient roadways, recreational parks and public transportation can be realized. As well as capturing the relentless march of uniform structures across an arid landscape, Cartagena has also explored the hardships faced by the new inhabitants of what can truly be described as the new dystopia.

A finalist in Aperture's 2008 Portfolio Prize, the project was compared to "the monumental images of Minor White and Ansel Adams, while simultaneously reaching further back to the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School....Cartagena's deliberate play on these visual tropes renders the desecration of these landscapes aesthetically as well as ethically repugnant. This tension between Romanticism and realism charges Cartagena's work with both the artist's love for the landscape and his sadness at its destruction, rendering the photographs simultaneously paean and admonishing elegy."

Three photographs from this series are currently on view at Jen Bekman through March 20th, as part of the just opened Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition show. 6 Spring Street, New York, NY. 212.219.0166.

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