PHOTO-EYE BEST BOOKS 2018

Alejandro Cartagena's favorite book from 2018

Through text and image, this book takes us on a journey of grief over the loss of a loved one, through the chaotic and rambling feelings mixed into the process. The book asks of us to let go of looking for specific answers about what "it's about" and drags us down a spiral of incertitude that slowly, like a movie, develops into an experience of the issue itself. We are made to feel the denial, the anger, and a possible acceptance of things that are out of our control. I truly enjoyed the flow of the texts and images playing on each other.

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Alejandro Cartagena (b. 1977, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects and books employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban and environmental issues. www.alejandrocartagena.com

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Alejandro Cartagena's favorite book from 2018

Gold, death and the uncertainty of our Latin American identities are some of the issues brought up in Juan Brenner’s new book. Uncomfortable and in your face, the images don’t shy away from pointing out how even after 500 years of the European invasion and massacre carried throughout Mexico and Guatemala, we still haven’t found peace.

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Alejandro is a editor and a self-publisher. His books examine social, urban and environmental issues in the Americas. Alejandro lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico.
www.alejandrocartagena.com

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Alejandro Cartagena's favorite book from 2018

I like books that tell the same story through the images and how they are designed. It is a book that narrates the complicated reality of the state of Guerrero in Mexico, where people colloquially say they live with "el Jesús en la boca" (with Jesus in your mouth).

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Alejandro Cartagena, Mexican (b. 1977, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban, and environmental issues. He is also the co-founder of Los Sumergidos publishing house and Fellowship Photos, where he works to publish work from Latin American artists and projects of artists considering the intersection of photography, video, and generative art.

IG @alexcartagenamex
www.alejandrocartagena.com

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Alejandro Cartagena's favorite book from 2018

I first heard of Luis's story before seeing the book. I have been teaching and visiting Guatemala for years. This was the first time in my life that I traveled with friends who carried guns for protection. I tell this part as this can create a bit of context for the harshness of violence and terror lived in some Latin American cities, including my hometown in Mexico. This book is outstanding on many levels. The strength to revisit a kidnapping, the courage to face your captures, and the wit to build all that into a sophisticated book with great design is commendable. This is a story that, for many of us in Latin America, is too close to home. We need more stories to be told of things that will never be part of our countries' official history books.

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Alejandro Cartagena's favorite book from 2018

I am fascinated with photo archives. Images can be found in them that, when seen in new light, offer new stories of moments past. Even though most of the reviews I've read on this project never mention the idea of these works as part of an archive, in this case, a personal archive, that was the aspect that most fascinated me. Images of self-exploration were hidden for years, marinating ideas that needed the passing of time to become stronger and better understood. Are we looking at the same photographs from the 1980s or the effect of the passing of time on these images?

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