/12 River

Alejandro Cartagena

Suburbia Mexicana: Lost Rivers

Through the 1960s and 80s many photographers portrayed and centered their work on industrial and suburban sites; the man altered landscape. It is now, 30 years later that the inevitable action-reaction to those human acts they pictured would start showing up somewhere. Lost Rivers is a representation of nature’s non-beneficiaries of our actual urban well-being. In the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, some rivers and streams have dried out or in the process of drying after Monterrey’s metropolitan area erupted its urban-suburban growth and its demand for water. These dried up streams and rivers are one of many unintended consequences of wrongly implemented economical strategies. Relying less on irony and more on a romantic representation of decay, Lost Rivers is a social comment on contemporary Mexican unplanned urban development and its struggles to become a country of homeowners.

Lost Rivers. All Archival inkjet prints, each 85 x 100 cm, framed, edition of 5

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