Jennifer Yoffy: 0:06

Welcome to Perfect Bound. I'm Jennifer Yoffy, the founder and publisher of Yoffy press in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a podcast where we talk to artists about their journey, how they got where they are, what right and wrong turns they made along the way, and where they're heading next. Dominican born photographer Alejandro Cartagena moved to Mexico, his mother's birthplace in 1990. He's developed a dynamic body of work exploring social, urban and environmental issues largely through the lens of the contemporary Mexican experience. His photographs frankly document new urban growth and altered landscapes, namely the proliferation of serially built homes and their ensuing environmental impact on the outskirts of the Monterey metropolitan area. And now, let's welcome Alejandro Cartagena. You ready for some questions?

Alejandro Cartagena: 1:12

Sure, shoot. I hope I don't disappoint.

Jennifer Yoffy: 1:13

Okay. Oh, not possible. So my first question is kind of bizarre. But, I read that your first images, like when you're first starting out with photography, we're all self portraits. And you said you wanted to explore how you saw yourself and how others saw you and you wanted to break this idea of the self. And then after that year, you felt like you'd met that goal. And the inner work was done, and you were able to move on to explore other ideas. So first, that struck me because as someone who has spent the pandemic, doing inner work, instead of making sourdough bread, I've been reading all these self help books, and holy moly, it's kind of blowing my night. So I'm impressed that you were able to flush that out so quickly. You're like a year self portraits, and now I'm ready to tackle, you know, socio political issues. So you turned your focus on the causes and effects of suburbia, and you haven't stopped? So what I'm wondering is, do you feel like this particular topic is your life's work? Or do you feel like you may get to a place where you've explored it fully from all angles, and you want to pivot to something different?

Alejandro Cartagena: 2:32

Okay, so, to start at the beginning. Yeah, it was about a year or so with self portraits, and it kind of dragged on a little bit more, but not so intensely. And on the surface, it does look like I left that behind. But in all honesty, I continued that search, but not looking at myself looking at the other. You know, looking at the people I'm inhabiting this place with. That's one of the key steps I feel in my career that made me more aware of what I was doing. At the beginning, I was photographing myself because I had an inner struggle, and I thought that that was the way to understand myself. But then, you know, I started to photograph outwards. And it was still the same struggle in a very personal level. I'm not going to tell you, my suburbia work is about myself, but it is. That's the fire that made me take those pictures because I wanted to understand my adoptive city, you know, I wasn't born here. I was brought here. So it was still an inner struggle. That was what made me photograph for years and years and years, the these landscapes and these places and these people, but it was always about trying to understand who am I between these people?

Jennifer Yoffy: 4:03

So is it like your inner struggle of Where do I belong? Because you grew up, you were born in Dominican Republic and then moved to Mexico. So feeling like, where's my home?

Alejandro Cartagena: 4:19

Yeah. I mean, we're not all the same Latin America. I mean, every country has it's thing, and the warmth of Dominican people is not the warmth of Mexican people. It's just, they just don't blend together. One is very intrusive. And by the intrusiveness, there's a I love you there....

Jennifer Yoffy: 4:45

Okay.

Alejandro Cartagena: 4:45

But if you're that intrusive here in Mexico you're like the weirdo, so I became the weirdo in Mexico. So it was kind of..., it was hard to come here. And as a teenager, it was even harder. So it's always been about that feeling in between; being from here and being from there, and photographing the landscape, photographing the people made me, I think, accept who I've become. And that's why you ask, "Is this going to be what you're going to be doing?" I think yes. I mean, I'm never going to be in a perfectly safe place with who I am. Because it is traumatic to change cultures in such ways. I mean, you know, I function, I have a family, I have kids, I talk to people. But inside, there is always this thing creeping up and weirding things out because nothing's normal, because I saw two realities that were called normal, and they're not. You know, one thing is normal here, and it's just completely weird in the other place. So how do you..., you can't fix that into, okay, I'm okay. You know, it's...

Jennifer Yoffy: 6:18

Yeah, so you're taking that inner tension, and you're applying it.

Alejandro Cartagena: 6:21

I've harnessed that tension and made it into a subject matter for the rest of my life. Being an outsider, lets you see things that maybe other people who are inside the culture imbued in this paradigm they can't even see. And I can see it, you know? I'm not saying that I'm the only one who can do this. I mean, a lot of people have traumatic situations that suddenly it's like, your family becomes an outside thing, because you've had such a traumatic situation with them that suddenly that paradigm of a perfect family falls apart. And you're like, oh, this isn't what I thought it was. Many people have these situations where they break out of the paradigm and see things in a different way. But anyways, I mean, that's the inner spark, that's the fire. But in the end, I'm a curious person, I was brought up in Dominican Republic, with a very critical father and I went to a British school, all British school teachers, so there was a little bit of, you know, leftist, kind of feeling in the school and critical thinking. And that, you know, combined with this situation of feeling like an outsider, made me want to read and think and not just photograph things. Because it's, it's inside me, it's what are the pictures about, you know?

Jennifer Yoffy: 7:59

Well, you also have this interesting, insider/outsider perspective, when you look at the Carpoolers work. You had said that you made these images, this bird's eye view and when you were thinking about a book, you were worried that it just was going to look like a typology, and after a few you're like, "Okay, I get it." So then you started riding in the trucks with the people and photographing what you were seeing. So that is, I think, a great example of that... you know, something you're noticing as an outsider, and then you're experiencing it as an insider to be able to represent both of those perspectives, and kind of heighten that tension more.

Alejandro Cartagena: 8:43

Well, you know, that is exactly what happened, but I hadn't, like worded it like that. And yeah, that's exactly... I mean, I guess I photograph my own experience. I think a lot of people feel that heir work is always a self portrait in a way. But yeah, that book it just felt that there was something missing. I didn't only wan to tell you, "Hey, look at the ." You know, it's the whole thin , because it was more compl

Jennifer Yoffy: 9:17

Ok, right, the burst mode. cated than just looking at them, you know? And my grandfather was a construction worker. And he did that. So I used to see that when I came on vacations o Mexico, he had his Ford F 150 And he would put us in the back of the truck with his worker, because he lived in Monterey and worked out in the outside of the city. So we would sometimes go..., he was our babysitter and he would take us to construction sites and we would help a little bit, carry a break o two. But that was a practice t at was very close to me. And seeing it, it just rang very personally. And then, of course it was a perfect connection between the other projects I h d done in previous years. And that was, I mean, I was really scared of photographing like hat, because it was stylistically so different from the suburbia project. I was photographing with a large format camera, with a medium format, camera, and fi m. Everything was slower, every decision, you know, took its time and here was like fast pace , life, you know, cars zoomin by. So I switched to a digital camera. And for me that was like , I can't do it. But then, you now, I played the game. Ok y, I'm gonna use the digital camera, but I'm not gonna use the speed.

Unknown: 11:09

Right! I'm not gonna do that. And I'm going to limit myself to one or two shots. And if I get it, I get it. And that made the project take much longer. Because it's hard to get, you know, get the tuck in the frame. But it soothed my soul. You know, I was doing something, you know, I was, I was gaining experience of how to, you know, photograph moving cars and fix them in this frame. So yeah, it was, it was exciting. It was a troubled time that the drug war was happening here in Monterey. It wasn't the best time to be on the streets. I got several visits from police because I'm on a highway, on a pedestrian bridge, photographing cars. So it was it was not an easy time to be photographing that. But yeah, it took me like I said, it took me a while to make the decision. Okay, this is a project that I'm going to pursue.

Jennifer Yoffy: 12:17

Well, you've also, I mean, you haven't stopped experimenting. We Are Things, your more recent project in the George Eastman House, I mean, that's a completely different process and departure. Yeah. And so you're cutting out, you're taking found photographs and removing portions and putting things back in. And, and when I was looking at that I was thinking about back to your inner work. So I heard your talk, and you were saying you were going through, you know, some personal issues and a hard time and you were looking at these vintage photos, these faces were staring back at you. And you cut them out. And you know, and so to me, I was like, okay, it's not self portrait, right? But it is, you know, it's like this process of creating maybe space for yourself or space, you know, in the world. So you took a completely different approach and based on what was happening inside, but it still does relate to your larger body of work.

Alejandro Cartagena:

Yeah, yeah, let's take it in parts. To start, my photography career starts in the archive. I I was a digitizer of an archive for five years. So my nine to five job was digitizing photographs from the 19th and 20th century. So full circle, I'm back to the archive. But in this case, I created my own archive, going to flea markets and dumpsters outside Mexico City and buying old photographs. And yes, as you say, the the personal situation, I was going through a divorce, it was just overwhelming. I never thought you know, this, again, a breaking of a paradigm. You know, I never saw myself divorced. And it was very, very hurtful. I was depressed and going to therapy. I had been going to therapy a year and then ended up going to therapy three more years. I mean, it's not an easy process to change your paradigm. It transforms you. And when those vintage pictures or found photographs were looking at me, these group photographs, I don't know what happened. But I asked my assistants, can you cut that out?

Alejandro Cartagena: 14:42

Can you cut those people out of the picture? And let's see what we can do with that. You know, it's just like an experiment and we were playing around with the cutout people. And then there was this hole of where, you know, the portrait, the group portrait was taken. And it was there for a whole year. And then I looked at it, and it was like that is a project.

Jennifer Yoffy: 15:09

Wow!

Unknown: 15:12

That empty space is a project because I still know what that photograph is about.

Jennifer Yoffy: 15:19

Sure. But I'm projecting, I'm filling in the gaps. Right, you're creating the context.

Alejandro Cartagena: 15:26

Exactly. The context and the content. Both at the same time. And, so I said, okay, let's look, I have more than 2000 pictures here, like, pull out all the group photographs. Let's, find a kind of coincidence between the groups. The first thing was size, okay, let's take all the five by sevens. Okay. Composition, okay, they're very centered with space around them. Okay, we did a group, okay. And then there are groups that are centered, but they're almost to the edge, there are two groups. Okay, what are we going to do with these? These that have space around them, let's just cut out the group. And, and you'll have, like the context around, and you'll still see the group and the ones that are almost to the edge, let's just cut the faces. Because if you cut the whole group and the image falls apart, there's nothing, no context. So that started the process of doing these groupings, and figuring out that photography has these modes, on how we see ourselves. And yes, it's about, you know, projecting yourself onto the image. But it's also about structure and how photography has taught us how to photograph things, and how to see ourselves as human beings in photographs. And that, by cutting them, I think, I projected my own personal situation where I wanted to see myself. I wanted to understand how I had become that person that thought that marriage was such and such a way, how I thought a father was such and such way. So by cutting, it was as a projection of trying to figure out my paradigm as a human being.

Jennifer Yoffy: 17:18

Right, like, could you see it a different way?

Alejandro Cartagena: 17:20

Exactly.

Jennifer Yoffy: 17:21

And be okay with that, and maybe even think that was better or.....

Alejandro Cartagena: 17:26

Exactly, es. And, and even come to acce t that I was programmed to b the man that I was supposed o be and the father that I was supposed to be, and the brother, the son, and going to therapy nd doing that at the same tim ? Oh, my God, I became..., you k ow, I was so enlightened. A d my soul became such a light oul after that, because I und rstood my programming. I mean, was, how do you say, "Let go by my therapist?" Three months ago she's like, "Okay, go out into the world and figure it out and ry to feel it on your own." But yes, it's not art therapy. I don't think it's that. It's about being conscious about what you're doing and what's the fire making you do it? And then what is the result? What do you have there? Yes, then something made you do it. That's great. But then, okay, let's look at it kind of objectively, you can't be completely objective. But what does it say? If it wasn't your work? Yeah. Right.

Jennifer Yoffy: 18:50

Well, then, do you think there's something to..., I mean, you looked at it for a year before it hit you over the head that this is a project. So I mean, I think that really speaks to the personal and human element of artists, where it depends on where you are, in your mind and your life. Yeah, where you know, something, hits or doesn't hit or sparks an idea or doesn't and something that you've been looking at for a year, all of a sudden, it was just the right time.

Alejandro Cartagena: 19:22

Exactly. Yeah, you're so right. I call it the process of marination. You have these projects, and they need to marinate so that they make sense and they have the flavor needed to coincide with yourself and the images that you have. Like right now here in the studio I have three projects that I did in the past 11 years, and they're going to be books coming out this year. But, one took 12 years to marinate, one took five years to marinate and the other one took eight years to marinate.

Jennifer Yoffy: 20:00

Have you ever had something marinate for like a month? Or for you, it's like always this, you have to sit on

Unknown: 20:06

No, no, no, no. There are things that happen like, it? immediately. The last zine I did, Insurrection Nation, that happened out of the blue. It was like, this makes sense like this - boom, boom, boom, we printed it out, we stapled it here, and it's done. You know, it's like, I like to have both things happening at the same time.

Jennifer Yoffy: 20:29

Okay, so let's talk about your books. Okay. Obviously, I have a very strong interest in books. And your books are dynamic and smart, and you made so many of them. So when you're developing a body work, do you have the photo book as the ideal final product? Or do you make the work and then decide if it would work as a book after?

Alejandro Cartagena: 20:52

It happens both ways. There are ideas that, I immediately see, this is going to be a book. Even from just thinking, okay, I'm going to take these pictures, it's going to come out as a book because I think of how they're going to be placed on the paper or there's something about the idea that just feels right. And sometimes there are projects that are commissions that had no intention of being a book and just being photographs for a newspaper or for a magazine. That's the case of one of the projects that I have on the wall. It was a commission for a French magazine. But, it was really close to what I was photographing at that time, which was Suburbia, and it's about traveling from suburbia to the city but in the bus, instead of like the carpoolers it was the bus. And my family is from one of the suburbs, my mom was born in Juarez, which is like an hour from here. And we have a lot of family there. And one of my uncles owns a bus company of the suburban buses. So for a week, I told him, hey, I'm going to jump on your buses, tell your drivers that I'm going to be in the buses. And so I jumped in the buses from three in the morning to 2 or 3pm and photographed the flow of coming and going and coming and going. And it was for this magazine. And that was in 2016 that I photographed. And then it was a conversation with my editor about this project, about this commission, and how I thought that it could be edited. That made us say, yes, that is a book, you know, and it was about the way the book is edited. It's that it's chronological, we we were not mixing like a 10am with a 6am. Because they look good, they look amazing together. But no, we're like, we're gonna be strict. And we're gonna let the flow of how I took the pictures dictate how the book is edited. And that is something that as an editor is really hard to let go of. So we said that's the premise, if it works, we'll make it a book and "F" worked! It was amazing, it was like perfect, like, boom, boom, boom, it just started to happen. It was like, we both looked at each other. It's like this is..., it's perfect. It's gonna work.

Jennifer Yoffy: 23:45

That's awesome. And those are the kind of games that make a book happen. It's like, I'm gonna try this with this book and with these images, and if it works, let's give it a try. And sometimes there are premises for images. And it doesn't work. And what happens is, is that it goes back to the archive, until there's a way to resolve it. It goes back to the marination. Well, you've self published but you've also collaborated with some different publishers. So how do you decide which direction to go in for each book?

Unknown: 24:26

Um, I mean, there's no formula it really depends on many things. I mean, like for this Suburban Bus book. We finished a really close to final dummy last year. And I had published last year with The Velvet Cell the homeownership book. And...

Jennifer Yoffy: 24:53

...which I just got, by the way.

Alejandro Cartagena: 24:55

Awesome!

Jennifer Yoffy: 24:55

So good, so good!

Alejandro Cartagena: 24:58

So...you know, because it got nominated for the Deutsche Brse prize. So, we published and then we continue talking about distribution and I was setting up my distribution center in Berlin because I self published. And I was in continuous conversation with anna who is the owner of The Velvet Cell so that I could set up my own distribution center like he has it in Berlin. So he was, you know, coaching me and in one of those conversations I'm like, "Oh, look, this is the new dummy of the book, I want to self-publish," I show it and he's like, "I love it, I love it." I'm like, I'll send you the dummy. He got it and he's like "We want to do this book wit you." I was gonna self publi h it. But then he was interest d in doing it. And then he giv s me the option to co-publis . Because that's how I publish d the other tw

Jennifer Yoffy: 25:57

Right, because I've noticed that you're still selling them on your website?

Alejandro Cartagena: 26:00

Exactly. So he's like, do you want to co-publish? Or do you want me to publish it as T e Velvet Cell? So for that boo , the deal is that he publishe it as The Velvet Cell. I hav n't worked with him that way so want to try it you know? It's ike, okay, let's do it that way Because I want to do two other books. And one of them, I'm mos likely going to self publis . So I need to not have so much nvolvement in the Suburban Bus. So I can have a little bit of time to self publish and pro ote one of the other books. So t's timing, it's how big the pro ect is, you know, like the the h meownership book, it took three ears to edit.

Jennifer Yoffy: 26:47

I cannot even imagine.

Alejandro Cartagena: 26:51

It was massive. I mean, it was on the wall here in the studio for three years shifting, shifting, shifting, shifting. I mean, we, we finally finished it at the start of the pandemic. And then there's one thing to finish it, and then start the dialogue with the publisher, you know, it's like, okay, this doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense. This is like the refining of the book. And that took us like two more months. And then finally, okay, we had a final design that we sent to him, and then you know, the technical problems of the images, of the text, so I needed the support from The Velvet Cell, for design things that I can't do, or I don't have the flavor for it.

Jennifer Yoffy: 27:44

Yeah.

Alejandro Cartagena: 27:45

So I know my limits, and I love collaboration, I am fascinated with the idea of cinema and, and movie making, and how they make these cultural projects, products that are so widespread, accepted, not all movies, but you know, they have this massive audience. And my theory, is that it's about collaboration, you have a director that's really enamored with his idea and striving to have his voice to come out, but then you have the editor who also has a voice and has to collaborate with with the director, and then you have the art director, and then you have the stage. All these heads that want their name at the end of the picture, and are never going to put their name if they don't do a good job. So I try to emulate that in a in a very domestic way. But like, all my books, I try to edit with somebody else. And that helps me not be, umm...

Jennifer Yoffy: 28:58

You feel like you'll get a better result by having somebody challenge you. Collaboration is a huge thing for me. It's like one of the main focuses I guess, of my imprint of Yoffy Press and kind of the way I like to see the world. But I definitely think too that, to get good collaboration you have to have really great chemistry. So it's important that everyone's on the same page about wanting to do a shared goal, you know, everyone's kind of doing everything that they can to push this forward in a way that feels really good.

Alejandro Cartagena: 29:38

Yeah, I mean, I think it's really beautiful to share authorship that way because like I said in cinema there is this major possibility to get a bigger crowd looking at your product. If there is a more sophisticated way to produce that project or projects? I mean, it can't be a coincidence that there's so many people involved in cinema and there's so many people looking at movies.

Jennifer Yoffy: 30:12

Right? Right. Absolutely.

Alejandro Cartagena: 30:14

There's something there. That makes it easier to look at because there's been so many filters before the end product comes out. So, so yeah. And then there are probably projects that are, you know, very indulging, and, you know, I'll do maybe 100 copies or 200 copies, because I know, it's just, you know, it's just for fun. It's like, okay, I'll do this boom, boom, and I'll be done with it. Like, this year, I want to do a project I've been working on for like, five years. It's a six book project of an archive, I love the archive I used to work at, and it's called Love and Politics. And it's about all the rituals of politics, and and how this public archive has deemed important to conserve these images about how those rituals are done.

Jennifer Yoffy: 31:10

Right. And there's selecting too, so it's the the curation of what stays in our kind of collective memories. Yes, exactly. So it's, it's about that. And, you know, it's, it's been in the works for like, five years. And like I haven't been able to publish and I'm like, okay, it's done next month, in March, we're going to send the designs, we're going to do it in Brazil printing. And it's going to be..., the original idea was to do like, 300 copies. I don't have the money to do 300 copies. So I'm just gonna do box sets of 100 copies the six at the same time. And that's it. Yeah. Get it while it's hot.

Alejandro Cartagena: 32:01

I need to get it out of my mind. So it's not a big investment to do 100 copies. And, I'll be so happy.

Jennifer Yoffy: 32:11

Right. Right. Right.

Alejandro Cartagena: 32:14

I think you have to judge.... I mean, you can't think that every single thing that you put out is massively attractive.

Jennifer Yoffy: 32:22

Right? You can't be so precious about every one. That makes sense.

Alejandro Cartagena: 32:27

In the end, what excites me the most is thinking of something, making the edit and sequencing and then seeing the book in the end, that is all that I care about.

Jennifer Yoffy: 32:41

Yes, I just need one copy.

Alejandro Cartagena: 32:44

Yeah, my goal for the next five years, I have 35 unpublished projects in my archive, and I'm going to do a maquette for every single one of them. And that's what I want to do. If they get published, who cares? I just want to have a fixed beginning and ending to these 35 projects that have been on my mind. What happens if I die? They're going to be loose images, and some curator is going to come in and say, I know Alejandro's work, this is for sure how he wants you to see it. No, no, I'm gonna tell you how I want you to see it. So that's my my five year plan. I've never had a five year plan.

Jennifer Yoffy: 33:31

So I asked this of all my guests. In this whole photo career, what would you consider to be your biggest wrong turn?

Alejandro Cartagena: 33:41

Wow. The first thing that popped into my mind was envying other photographers.

Jennifer Yoffy: 33:49

Mm hmm. Tell me more about that.

Alejandro Cartagena: 33:52

I think that's when you think that you deserve what other artists or photographers are doing. It takes you to a path of expectations, of wrong expectations. And the only next path, the next step, after an expectation is to fall. So it just doesn't, it just doesn't work. And I think I grew out of that about nine years ago. And I concentrated on doing work and it came after we had our first child, that was overwhelming in itself. And then I got so scared that I was never going to do any more projects. And, you know, 10 years later, I have 35 projects.

Jennifer Yoffy: 34:46

Well, that was an unfounded fear.

Alejandro Cartagena: 34:49

So yeah, I mean, I became, I don't know how you say that word in English - but just, like super determined, and I started to photograph like I had never photographed before. It was just boom, boom, boom.

Jennifer Yoffy: 35:03

Like, taking the energy away from what was really unproductive. Which was actually making you unproductive. And focusing it on what you could control and was your own work?

Alejandro Cartagena: 35:15

Yeah, exactly. Taking a stoic stance in that the only thing I'm in ontrol of is myself and my thoug ts. Everything else, i just, it's just there to test what I have inside of me. So y ah, in a practical way, I, ou know, I always see things s you know, mistakes are oppor unities to grow. So maybe I've invested too much sometimes in olo shows and have sold nothing. Maybe put too much money in a bo k and barely sold. I mean, t ose are, you know, those are le rning curves. But I wouldn't call them things that really mad me low. No. Yeah, I think the other thing is, it's way more b gger because it really, like it akes you to dark places.

Jennifer Yoffy: 36:14

Yeah, it's a whole mindset.

Alejandro Cartagena: 36:16

Exactly.

Jennifer Yoffy: 36:17

So what was the best decision you made? And did you see it that way? At the time?

Alejandro Cartagena: 36:22

Yeah. Okay. So my best decision in my career was, I think, I had like three or four years into my career. To start with I felt I was late to the game, right? I was 27. I already I had a degree in leisure management. I had worked in restaurants and hotels in the service industry for about 10 years. And then I came into photography. And, you know, I was all excited, and I wanted to eat up the world. And then I went to FotoFest, I remember what year after doing photography with two projects, and I got ripped to shreds. It was horrible. It was a horrible review. But you know, fair enough, I wasn't ready, right? I just started to study, and study and study and really know what I was doing. And think what I would like, I kind of understood what I needed to do to kind of make it, and where I wanted to make it. Anyway, long story short, after that, I was investing my time and effort and money into breaking into the Mexican scene, right? So I was in every contest, in every biannual, trying for grants, doing everything that I could here in Mexico. And it was a lot of work. And I was like, oh my God but then there's, you know, there's the US or Europe, I mean, there's the world. What if I put that same effort to show my work outside of Mexico. And sure enough, like when I said, I'm going to do that, and everything changed, because there the world is so much more bigger than just Mexico. I think I was kind of speaking to the history of photography, the American history of photography, the European history of photography, which was what I was, like, devouring up through research. And the combination of looking and taking pictures of things that weren't really known about what was happening in Mexico at that time and not just violence. It was about you know, space, it's about architecture, it's about, you know, something that's not overtly sensational and newsworthy.

Jennifer Yoffy: 38:56

It's something that people, I mean, suburbs and sprawl, and it's something that we all have relationship with, but not in a different culture necessarily.

Alejandro Cartagena: 39:06

Exactly, exactly. So I think I mean, there's many things that happened there. But yeah, that was, I think, the best decision that I did in my career, like, calculated decision. I'm gonna invest time and money in promoting my work outside of Mexico. And then let's see what happens here in Mexico afterwards.

Jennifer Yoffy: 39:25

Yeah. So what's next for you? Other than 35 books? What do you still want to accomplish with your work?

Alejandro Cartagena: 39:36

Some of the things that I'm really, really excited about is working with archives. So like I want to work with a national archive here in Mexico that has millions of images from the 18th and 19th century, 20th century, the revolution. I mean, there's so many things in there. I want to do residencies and go to archives. And just eat up what's there and come up with ideas. These dead photographs. They're just sitting there, you know, and there are so many things to say about our world today through the archives. So that is one of the things that I'm most excited about. And I'm doing these six books that this collection are part of, like my first foray, that I did about that. And, and it's amazing. I love it. It's just, again, having worked in the archive and knowing that the images are just scanned and conserved, because that's what you're told to do not because they're really people doing something with them. You know, sometimes they get like, oh, we want to use one image for a book. But, it's not about conceptualizing the images themselves, and why they're being archived that I am really enamored with that idea.

Jennifer Yoffy: 41:03

Yeah, that sounds perfect for you.

Alejandro Cartagena: 41:05

Yeah, yeah. That and, you know, doing the 35 maquettes.

Jennifer Yoffy: 41:09

I mean, you've got some ideas, some ways to pass the time.

Alejandro Cartagena: 41:14

Yeah. And, you know, I'm doing like, I'm going out to photograph not that much because of the pandemic. But I have, like three projects that I want to photograph here in Monterey, in the next few months, and yeah, that's, that's what's next for now.

Jennifer Yoffy: 41:32

That's exciting. I can't wait to see everything.

Alejandro Cartagena: 41:35

Yeah!

Jennifer Yoffy: 41:36

And I so appreciate you doing this with me today. This was the most fun.

Alejandro Cartagena: 41:40

Thank you, Jennifer. And I hope we meet again.

Jennifer Yoffy: 41:51

You signed it. And we spoke for like a minute.

Alejandro Cartagena: 41:55

I remember that. And actually, I have something of yours.

Jennifer Yoffy: 42:00

What is that?!

Alejandro Cartagena: 42:01

You lent me the pen, a Sharpie pen.

Jennifer Yoffy: 42:06

Stop it.

Alejandro Cartagena: 42:08

A Sharpie pen, like a metallic Sharpie pen to sign it and then I was looking for you and I couldn't find you. It's in one of my jackets that I use for winter travel.

Jennifer Yoffy: 42:23

That's hilarious. Well, I'm glad it served you well.

Alejandro Cartagena: 42:28

It's been there in the jacket and it's signed a lot of people's other books.

Jennifer Yoffy: 42:33

Wow. Wow. I really feel like I'm contributing to the world.

Alejandro Cartagena: 42:36

There you go.

Jennifer Yoffy: 42:38

That's amazing, huh? So I guess you do remember.

Alejandro Cartagena: 42:41

I do remember.