Alejandro Cartagena does a lot. He is a photographer. He is a publisher at Studio Cartagena and a copublisher, with Carlos Loret de Mola, at Los Sumergidos, a small independent bookmaker based in New York and Mexico. He self-publishes some of his own books; others are published by the likes of Skinnerboox, in Italy, and Gato Negro Ediciones, in Mexico. And sometimes he is the author. He is an in-demand photobook editor and, most recently, as a cofounder of the NFT organization Fellowship, is deeply involved with the NFTs scene. Cartagena’s overall practice as an indefatigable bookmaker—thirty-three books and counting—has produced a compelling network of inquiries about social, urban, and environmental issues related to Monterrey, Mexico, where he lives, and to Latin America in general. His work is at once geospecific and universal, methodical and loose, empirical and poetic. One morning last fall, during Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair in New York,
