Alejandro Cartagena is a multifaceted photographer known for his impactful documentary work in Mexico, where he has crafted a diverse array of photobooks addressing social and political issues. His involvement in photographic education, curation, and mentorship of Latin American artists has been significant. Recently, he co-founded Fellowship, an organization that explores the current possibilities and evolution of photography, including the game-changing attributes of artificial intelligence. In this interview, we discuss his perspective regarding the future of imagery, the essence of being an artist in today's landscape, and dispelling misconceptions about these emerging technologies.

Oman Morí: Let’s begin by talking about the widely recognized series “People of Suburbia.” What is the main theme of the series? Could you explain how it was achieved and what procedure was used?

Alejandro Cartagena: “People of Suburbia” was a project that started in 2005 when I documented many new housing developments in Monterrey's suburbs. Back then, I knew these perfect-looking streets, houses, and parks would one day be inhabited, and I wanted to document that change. So, four years after I took those initial images, I returned to one of the areas I had pictured most: Juarez Nuevo León. This is where my mother and her family come from. Some of these suburbs were built on land that belonged to my great-grandfather and was stolen by cartels and politicians. So, that personal connection to the land and how it was being appropriated, legally and illegally, was something that kept me coming back to document these spaces. The images were taken at the start of a gruesome war against cartels in the metro area of Monterrey, so there was a lot of uncertainty and distrust. I would park my car outside the housing complexes, carry my 4x5 camera around the different blocks, and engage with the people I saw. I would tell them about my connection to the area and how I wanted to capture the transition from rural to suburban space. I would normally go there early in the morning or late in the afternoon, where I would encounter the families and individuals. After a few months into the project, I was advised to stop going to these places by some locals as I was being “seen” by the local cartels. It became a really difficult area. The military took over the city police, and the whole police department was incarcerated. My parents had a restaurant in the suburb and had to close down because of the threats they had to constantly endure from the cartels. These images would not have happened if I would have started a few months later.

Alejandro Cartagena, *Girl Coming Home to Suburban Juarez From a Night Out in the City*, from the series *People of Suburbia*, 2011.

Oman: Your work often delves into social, urban, and environmental issues. Could you describe your motivations and how you begin exploring these themes through photography?

Alejandro: I started photography at a particular moment of what was happening economically and politically in Monterrey. It is a big industrial city, just south of the US border, with many ecological and social issues. My upbringing in the Dominican Republic made me always see these things in a peculiar light, and when I started photography, I felt compelled to picture those I had seen and thought about for years. Though most of the themes I address in my work are somewhat charged with these ideas you mention, it has always been about an attempt to understand the culture I was made to adapt to.

Oman: How do you hope your photographs contribute to conversations about urbanization, social issues, and the environment on an international scale?

Alejandro: One of the great opportunities photography offers us is contemplation. In that still moment, many questions can be addressed, so you are confronted to think about what is present in the images. With the addition of sequencing and designing a photobook, you can carry a broad narrative about the photograph's content and how we think of the things we see in it. Photography, then, is a tool for pointing at things, and what I did in these projects was point at things I was curious about and questioned. I hope viewers have the same opportunity to think and ask the same or more questions about what I saw. There are no answers in my images but opportunities to think of the issues in the frame. The peculiarities of how Mexico became a suburbanized country are things I think we should all analyze. Where did the homeownership model we were playing out come from? How are these political decisions affecting the land, people, and culture? Why did we decide to follow a flawed suburban model that in other countries has proven toxic and detrimental to social cohesion and the environment?

Oman: I'd like to ask you about the work on Artificial Intelligence curation that you presented at Paris Photo a couple of weeks ago.

my work has always been about an attempt to understand the culture i was made to adapt to

Alejandro: At Paris Photo, we introduced a project called Fellowship which I co-founded in 2021. This organization is dedicated to discovering new ways to distribute photographic art and explore its intersection with other digital mediums, such as generative art, artificial intelligence, and video. Our curatorial thesis argues that photography has influenced various creative mediums. After two centuries of living in the photographic era, all mediums possess a notion of the photographic. We can find this notion in painting or video and in the idea of objectivity and photographically viewing the world. Therefore, these values are present across different artistic mediums. So what we consider 'photographic' is not only what comes from a camera capture. This enables us to expand the curation program we lead. During Paris Photo, we aimed to showcase an evolution in photographic projects, represented by Joel Meyerowitz's “Sequels.” For over 60 years, Joel has built an archive of approximately 250,000 photos. The premise of this project is to achieve something that cannot be accomplished in a book or a traditional exhibition. We proposed to Joel the idea of publishing one piece a day for ten years, selling it as an NFT through daily auctions. It is an experiment in editing and long-form storytelling. The excitement of this project lies in its format: it's a slow edition, something unconventional in photography. Normally, when proposing an exhibition, all photographs are presented together in a block. However, we can create a new way of distributing and conceiving a photographic narrative through NFT technology. Viewers can come daily to witness the development of the sequence Joel is constructing, employing values of photographic editing, thematic connections, and formal connections between images. At Paris Photo we presented a mosaic of 12 pieces in collaboration with Joel, exploring the game of editing and connections between images. For Joel, this has been fundamental in his photographic practice. He has always believed confronting two images can generate new ideas and meanings. This represents the "before" in photography, where we come from. Then, around Joel's project, we exhibited pieces related to the development of artificial intelligence in a post-photographic context.

Alejandro Cartegena, *People Walking Home to Juarez Suburb*, from the series *People of Suburbia*, 2011.

Oman: Tell me more about what you mean by "post-photography"

Alejandro: When I use the term 'post-photographic,' I am referring to moving beyond the traditional method of capturing images by physically going out into the world. Instead relying on other tools, including cameraless photography, digital manipulation, and now artificial intelligence, to create images that resemble photographs. In our exhibition, we featured works by seven artists who utilize artificial intelligence to produce images with a photographic aesthetic. To provide historical context, the project we presented at Paris Photo began with the world's first project to generate images from texts. This project is called alignDRAW and was created by Elman Mansimov, a 19-year-old computer scientist from Azerbaijan in 2015. The thesis behind this idea was to explore the possibility of training an algorithm to generate images based on text descriptions of scenes and objects. At the time of the study, what we now refer to as "prompting" existed in the form of algorithms that interpreted images and generated descriptive captions of what was in the images. This project re-engineered that technology. Instead of interpreting images to generate text, it gave the algorithm text to generate images. In 2015, after numerous tests, there was a breakthrough in generating the first text-to-image. That section of the Fellowship booth was crucial because it contextualized what is happening today, eight years later, showing a significantly improved scenario. This historical contextualization helped people understand the origin and recognize that the concept of generating images through text is not straightforward. With that premise in mind, it allowed us to present the cutting-edge artists working with these image-generating algorithms. We have several examples; let me discuss two. One is Laurie Simmons. Laurie has been an artist since the '70s and '80s, involved in creating staged images, a part of what was considered 'the pictures generation.' There was an understanding that there was no need to create more images as there were already enough in the world. The focus was on creating images that referenced existing ones, a precursor in the '80s to what AI is doing now. AI art proposes the premise that we have all the images of the world; let's generate new ones based on those existing images and understand the patterns of how we have seen the world. For instance, there are trillions of landscape images. So, you train a machine on what comprises a landscape - understanding there's a horizon, a sky, a ground; sometimes, there are figures on the ground or in the sky. What AI does is incredibly human; it's trained on how we humans have chosen to view the world through photography, painting, and drawing. It encodes the human way we've visually described the world but does so exceedingly efficiently. This often creates discomfort, questioning how a machine can replicate this human perspective of the world, but it is, in the end, replicating the way we have pictured the world around us. Thus, AI is unequivocally a human representation. Laurie uses these technologies to generate images that make you think you're looking at images she made in the '80s. She continues to talk about the same idea: we already know all the images, and what's needed are some suggestions and references to activate your understanding of the image in front of you. She used small models and created miniatures, then photographed them.

what i did in these projects was point at things i was curious about and questioned

Now, when you see her AI-generated images, they resemble her paper or small model miniatures. However, they are images created using artificial intelligence. Laurie was fundamental at the booth because she represents the connection between traditional photography — images captured with a camera — and traditional photography not made to tell the truth but to capture an artist's idea. In this sense, it reflects the premise we believe in at Fellowship: photography is the artistic tool to see the world, and artificial intelligence is the artistic tool to imagine the world. The final example from our booth is the work of Roope Rainisto, a photographer, designer, and AI specialist from Finland. He has used photography in his artistic practice for over twenty years. However, around three years ago, he began researching artificial intelligence and has since developed an extensive body of work. He is one of the artists and photographers who have conducted many experiments with this technology in terms of technique, opening up great opportunities for themes and ideas that best integrate the images that can be created with these tools. He presented two large-scale pieces of 200x150 cm, where he illustrated how artificial intelligence can be used for narrative purposes. The model is trained using millions of images, to which he additionally adds images he has generated over the years, resulting in outcomes impossible for any commercial artificial intelligence model to produce images similar to the ones he creates. What we're witnessing is something that is increasingly being used by artists as they train their models with their images. This makes the use of artificial intelligence more of a continuation of their visual and personal artistic codes rather than the use of commercial models that may flatten the artist's singularity. To address the main theme of his project REWORLD, he uses a technique similar to painting within the image, called inpainting. This technique has created strikingly familiar scenarios that show the cracks of the AI hallucinations of these places and scenes. Through this technique, he somehow generates a digital collage of text rendered into images. In this process, he provides the algorithm with an initial text describing a nighttime scene in a metropolis. Then, within that image, he starts describing specific elements through text, like buildings in one area, people in another, and traffic signs elsewhere, thereby creating a textual composition or collage. Ultimately, this collage, rendered as a complete image, represents the highest level we currently have in using artificial intelligence to imagine and conceive new images.

Alejandro Cartagena, *Couple Outside the Sun Mall in Juarez Suburb*, from the series *People of Suburbia*, 2011.

Oman: In your opinion, what do you foresee as the future and evolution of AI?

Alejandro: The crucial aspect to understand is that AI is a tool. The aesthetic it creates of fantastical worlds or impossible scenes isn't novel. This aesthetic has existed in photography since the medium's invention and was exacerbated with the invention of Photoshop. Photography is an art form that captures reality but does not necessarily represent it, similar to pictorialism. This AI-generated aesthetic has been a part of photography. Photography has always provided a platform for imagining the world. Many have created images beyond reality, even without a camera in the darkroom. This correlates perfectly with what's happening in AI now. Photographers disinterested in documentary photography but focusing on using the medium as a tool for art will transition to using AI. I believe there will be a consolidation of artists who always viewed photography as imagination rather than a representation of reality and see these tools as the perfect medium for their ideas. Additionally, AI does something that a photo cannot—it comprehends trillions of images that no humans can. Exploring this algorithmic world, codified through paintings, drawings, and predominantly photography's 200-year dominance as an image-making tool, is uncharted territory. The AI explores an aesthetic realm that humans can't perceive. One of the misinformed criticisms is that these images are imperfect—precisely, that imperfection is intriguing. It showcases the impossible image between perfection and hallucination. AI creates something imperfect, something unimaginable, which is intriguing in terms of conceptualization and aesthetics. But just like having a camera in a smartphone doesn't make everyone a photographer, having AI-generated image tools won't make everyone an artist. It's a new model of image generation, not a guarantee of artistic prowess.

Oman: Looking back, what was the connection between your early exploration of suburban life in Monterrey and your subsequent interest in AI, leading to the co-founding of the Fellowship?

There are no answers in my images but opportunities to think of the issues in the frame

Alejandro: My interest in becoming a promoter grew from my photography background and the encouragement of my mentors. I founded a school in Monterrey after four years of practicing photography. For five years, we conducted workshops focusing on photography history, technique, and composition to train new photographers and cultivate an audience for contemporary photography. I've conducted numerous workshops globally on photography, and photobooks, and taught university classes, all aimed at nurturing new photographers to view this medium as an expressive art form. Founding “Los Sumergidos,” a publishing house that primarily publishes Latin American artists to introduce them to American and European audiences, was crucial. I experienced the struggle of being a Latin artist with limited visibility, making efforts to gain global recognition. Amid plans for exhibitions at the defunct NY Paris Photo and LAABF, the pandemic disrupted everything. This experience motivated me to explore new ways of promoting artists. In 2020, I came across NFTs, and the idea of digital images as original assets caught my attention despite some initial confusion. In a way, photographers have been selling NFTs for years through digital image sales to publications based on trust rather than proof of originality. We hand over JPEGs, and we would be paid digital money for them. With blockchain and NFTs, there's an opportunity to revolutionize image distribution alongside photobooks and prints, creating distinct markets for digital art and photography. A market for collecting digital images is emerging, appealing to nomadic individuals who value digital images over physical objects. Witnessing this trend, I began to explore AI-generated images in 2021, initially naively, but it became a fascinating exploration.

Alejandro Cartagena, *Business in Newly Built Suburban Juarez*, from the series *People of Suburbia*, 2011.

Oman: How does your interest in AI relate to your work as a photobook editor? You have edited many photobooks and appear to value this medium as a form of art and a way to tell stories. What role do you think photobooks currently play and will play in the future?

Alejandro: Regarding photobooks, I strongly believe in the power of the physical object. Although a printed photograph may have intrinsic values by which it sustains itself as an artwork, the same codes may not always translate as effectively in a photobook. Photobooks present only a part of the story, requiring different values to function narratively. They offer a unique way of storytelling compared to displaying images on a wall. I’ve been trying to understand what is the value of the digital image. What can a digital image do compared to its print counterpart in terms of aesthetics or narrative? This is something I had never considered before and I think there are great things to explore there. I mean, what is the photograph? The negative, the raw file, the print, the book? Conceptually, these are questions I like asking, and both NFTs and AI images are perfect to address them.

Oman: Reflecting on your past as a photographer exploring suburban life in Monterrey through various mediums, how do you perceive your evolution? How does this align with your current discoveries in Fellowship, collaborating with AI-driven artists?

Alejandro: I have a strong affinity for artists connected to reality and offering commentary on it. I discovered that commenting on life, social issues, politics, or the environment can be achieved through fiction, not just documentary projects. This revelation has become my current exploration. While AI artists create non-documentary images, they still comment on our world, which I find fascinating. As photographers, we hold a peculiar relationship with reality. Sometimes, I feel slightly out of place when working on more fictional ideas of art because it is not quite my background, but I think that I bring to the table a different flavor to this fiction exploration because I have experience with documentary-style work.

Alejandro Cartagena, *Young Man in Car in Juarez Suburb*, from the series *People of Suburbia*, 2011.

Oman: How do you envision the evolution of Fellowship?

Alejandro: We're exploring text-to-video projects, an area that's changing really fast. These quick changes are rare, and it’s something unprecedented in an artistic medium. daily.xyz is our video program that is surveying the current ways artists are doing video art with these new tools. We're watching little by little artists get better at telling stories and conceptualizing ideas through moving images and sounds that are created through AI. The program will serve as a document of how the changes in the tools were constantly changing the narratives.

Oman: As a Latin American artist, what difficulties have you faced in the European or North American markets? What advice would you give, and what major differences do you see between these markets?

Alejandro: The creation of Fellowship is a response to the challenge of distributing artwork beyond the Latin American region. It's important to understand that you will need to work twice as hard as others because visibility can be significantly harder in Latin America. I manage multiple projects simultaneously to increase my footing outside of my region; focusing on one isn't enough. Multitasking is key. In Latin America, we lack the robust photography market seen in the US and Europe. Instead of dwelling on this, take action and adapt your strategies.

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