Lost Rivers
By alejandro cartagena
7 Mar 2008
My interest in depicting these contemporary archeological sites came about through 3 years of traveling the 51 municipalities that conform the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León. During these prolonged trips I continually encountered stories of beautiful balnearios (natural water springs) rivers and streams where crowds of people would visit in weekends and how in the past 20 years these places had dried out affecting towns economically and socially. Some say its being caused by an inevitable change in climate but others insist in the abuse the Water Commission of Monterrey has done to these water sources in order to supply water for Monterrey's (4.000.000 habitants 2005) metropolitan area cities. I felt attracted to pursue the creation of a series that could reflect this reality but with a sublime visual richness generating photopgraphs that are in a borderline between the artistic and the documentary genres. I was interested in relying less on irony (as the New Topographer in the 70s and 80s did) and more on a quasi-romantic representation of decay that could comment on contemporary Mexican unplanned urban development and its unintended consequences.
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