carpoolers first edition. the first book I ever edited and designed. at the time, I was working as an asistant for Alejandro Cartagena, I got to see the production of most of the photographs of this series. when he got the idea of making a book he included me in the process from the beginning, I’ll be forever grateful for that. crazy, prolific artist as he has always been, I got to take a deep dive into the conceptual making and design of this book while he worked in other of his multiple projects. being the first big book both of us got to make, we learned a lot on this one, about how a book is put together but also about how the body of work is felt through it. we wanted it to feel as we felt being on that bridge waiting for these trucks to pass and the first idea was to try and make it seem as if the trucks were moving forward. we tried it for a while, but it was evident to me that it didnt work, something felt off, that wasn’t precisely the way it felt being up there. so after a while we tried puting more than two trucks in a single spread, cutting part of them at the sides, that way it felt more like a bird’s eye point of view of a street, instead of a highway with moving cars. this was a big move for both of us, I think that’s the exact spot in which we understood that the book form can feel, physically, as it feels being in a place making and thinking about the images. we tried some things that we thought daring for that time like cutting different sizes of paper and some fold-outs, in retrospect some of these things don’t work as well as I thought at the time, but fortunately we got (and still plan to have) a lot more changes to experiment with different aspects of this series in the subsequent editions.

carpoolers second edition. for the second edition we wanted to do something different, we had learned some things from the experience of making the first and we didn’t thought it made much sense to just re-print it. it wasn’t just about the book itself, but about the project. alejandro had been exhibiting the work, it became very well known and every opportunity he had was an opportunity to go deep into the subject itself. naturally his ideas about the topic were expanding and transforming. we took this opportunity to reflect that into the book. if the first one was based on a sense of discovery of what he found while looking down from a bridge, the second one was about the fact that these people exist and an opportunity to think about them and their role in the fabric of a city. even if the design of the book is a bit more (intentionally) unclean, the sequence feels refined and precise. this is probably my favorite in the series.

Carpoolers (second edition) by Alejandro Cartagena


Publication date April 2016 / 19 X 30cm
Softcover, 112 pages, Offset printing
Edited by Fernando Gallegos and Alejandro Cartagena
Text by Jessica McDonald
Editorial Design by Roberto Salazar
Printed in Taiwan
Print supervision and production by Eanna de Freine
Published by Alejandro Cartagena

carpoolers third edition. i have mixed feelings about this one. we wanted to go a bit beyond, daring to make a judgement about what we thought the situation was for the people portrayed in this project, the sequence is thought of as a narrative about these workers being “buried” by the city they helped build, this feeling is reinforced by the inclusion of discarded test prints at the end of the book in which people, trucks and city views are yuxtaposed creating some strange compositions. it is an experience that comes up as more raw than the previous editions and I think it’s achieved. but the product design is a bit uncomfortable, the soft cover feels a bit akward, unlike the second edition in which the soft cover feels just right. if i could go back in time I’d push a bit more on the cover being a bit more solid.

Carpoolers (third edition) by Alejandro Cartagena


Publication date 2019
19 X 30cm, Softcover, 112 pages, Offset printing
Edition of 490
Edited by Fernando Gallegos and Alejandro Cartagena
Text by Jessica McDonald
Editorial Design by Roberto Salazar
Printed in Madrid by Brizzolis
Prepress La Troupe
Published by Alejandro Cartagena

carpoolers fourth edition. this book was thought of as the definitive version of what we experimented with all three previous editions. we included some more images, we made it a bit more moderated, i wanted it to feel like a clear presentation of what the carpoolers project had been during the last 8 years. the way i’d describe it is as “enjoyable” not in a good or bad way, just a book that feels exactly like what it is. it references the first edition in its construction but includes some elements that we thought were working from the previous ones. for this one we didn’t cut images or placed them in unconventional positions, it is a traditional book of one image on each page focusing on the way each double spread communicates as a pair. i remember being very happy with the result, specially with the cover that includes a glossy print of one of the images. it is overall, in my opinion, a nice object that narrates what the project has done over the years in an adequate way.

Carpoolers (fourth edition) by Alejandro Cartagena


Publication date 2021
21.5 X 33.5 cm
Hardcover, 112 pages, Offset printing
Edited by Fernando Gallegos and Alejandro Cartagena
Text by Brad Feuerhelm
Printed in Istanbul by Mas Matbaa
Published by Los Sumergidos and Alejandro Cartagena