car poolers

I love this body of work by Alejandro Cartagena. He began it by documenting how people in Monterey, Mexico (where he lives and works) use their cars - how they personalize their cars, how they drive from here one place to another, who they drive with, etc. He realized that construction workers in Monterey often live an hour or so away from the places they work, and because there is no public transportation for them to use, they load (and often cram) themselves into vehicles to get to various job sites. He started looking down from building and bridges to see how the cars and trucks looked. Cartagena was struck by the perspective and starting shooting!

"Car Poolers is a project that continues my visual research on how the Mexican suburbs impact the landscape, the city and its inhabitants. 

I´ve been shooting the project since 2011 on Monterey's highway 85 going south bound to one of the richest cities in Latin America, San Pedro Garza Garcia, one of the nine cities that form the Metropolitan area. 

I shoot from a pedestrian overpass that looks over the cars coming out of a small tunnel and 'predict' which trucks might have people in the back. These images present a not-so-subtle observation of overgrowth issues in Mexico; where suburbs are being built in far away lands, far from the urban centers, causing greater commutes and consumption of gas."
- Alejandro Cartagena

They remind me of Joseph Cornell's boxes.