Piling in a Flatbed to Get By in the Suburbs

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A bridge is situated on a highway that goes from the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo — across the United States border in Laredo, Tex. — due south to Monterrey. In the early-morning hours last winter, Alejandro Cartagena stood there, pointing his lens down at the passing cars, like a distracted spy.

He was peeking into the backs of the pickup trucks, where construction workers pile together on their way to earn an honest living. His photo series, “Car Poolers,” is an effort to peer inside these tiny worlds that straddle public and private.

“When I started to take the pictures from that point of view, that just made a whole different thing open up, because there’s issues of intimacy or privacy being expressed in a public space,” said Mr. Cartagena, 35. “There’s a sense of the invisibility of the reality of so many people in Mexico that is popping out because of the images.”

His inspiration stemmed from a previous project, “Suburbia Mexicana,” which showed new suburban constructions in the Monterrey region, lined in innumerable rows. The stillness in those images belies the terrible violence that wracks Mexico’s northern cities. The drug war has been moving out of the city and into the suburbs, where, according to Mr. Cartagena, the growing population, reduced police presence and increasing income inequality make a life that promises money, if not stability and safety, appealing.

“There is such a big contrast between the rich and the poor here in Mexico,” Mr. Cartagena said.

Much of what troubles Mr. Cartagena goes unseen. “We don’t want to talk about it,” he said, “but it’s the reality and that’s what triggered the drug war.”

Alejandro Cartagena

By contrast, these car-poolers seek another way. In the backs of these flatbeds, Mr. Cartagena sees hard workers, doing whatever is necessary to maintain a legitimate job, pay a mortgage and survive in an acceptable way.

From his vantage, the flatbeds that carry the workers resemble still-lifes or a carefully appointed Joseph Cornell shadow box. “They’re almost like these little houses,” Mr. Cartagena said, “the interiors of these little houses where the guys are sleeping.”

In this parking lot of zooming vehicles, Mr. Cartagena has found a way into places that he couldn’t enter in “Suburbia Mexicana,” and the intimacy reveals some compromises. It is illegal to ride in the bed of a pickup truck — a relatively minor infringement — but the ride in winter is cold and crowded, and a worker’s space, along with his sense of manliness, is challenged.

“There is this thing about them being workers and the masculinity of them just disappearing,” Mr. Cartagena said. “They have to survive. They have to work. So it doesn’t matter if they are all spooning into each other.”

He added: “I am sure they wouldn’t say spooning with their work buddy. It has to be done in order to make things work.”

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