Mexican artist Alejandro Cartagena will teach a two day workshop focused on photobook history, edit and sequencing methods. It is geared towards artists with work in progress who are looking for direction and guidance to create a book. His projects are primarily documentary based, and employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban and environmental issues in Latin America. Cartagena’s recent selfpublished book carpooler was listed as one of the best photobooks in 2014 by Time magazine. Students are asked to bring up to 3 projects of 20 to 30 pictures each printed at approximately 4x6.
This workshop is co-presented with CONTACT, LACAP and Circuit Gallery. It is in conjunction with Contacting Toronto: Expanding Cities, a CONTACT public installation at Warden subway station. Curated by Sharon Switzer. Co-produced by PATTISON Onestop and Art for Commuters.
Alejandro will be presenting a lecture at OCAD University. For more info, please go to http://www.circuitgallery.com/alejandro-cartagena-lecture-video/
Alejandro Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His projects are primarily documentary based, and employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban and environmental issues in Latin America. His work also engages with a larger history of photography by reinterpreting or rethinking the ways in which poignant issues have been addressed or represented in the past. This has widened his works’ aesthetic and conceptual approach and added layers of meaning to his complex interpretations of our society.
Cartagena’s work has been exhibited and published internationally and is in public and private collections in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and the United States, including the SFMOMA, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Museum of Fine arts Houston, the Portland Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Rio, Brazil, the Fototeca de Nuevo Leon, Mexico and the Fototeca Nacional in Pachuca, Mexico.
He is the recipient of several major national grants, numerous honorable mentions and acquisition prizes in Mexico and abroad.
He received the Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino award in Chile, the Premio Salon de la Fotografia from the Fototeca de Nuevo Leon, the Premio IILA-Fotografia 2012 award in Rome and a POYi reportage award of excellence among others. He has been named a FOAM magazine talent and one of PDN’s 30 International Emerging Photographers to Watch. He has also been a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize and has been nominated for several other important prizes such as the Santa Fe photography prize, the Prix Pictet, the Photoespaña Descubrimientos award, and the FOAM Paul Huff award.
