Nuevo León: The Future is Unwritten, curated by Ariadna Ramonetti Liceaga and Mauricio Maillé, is a striking showcase of how photography can unravel, challenge, and reimagine the complex social threads of Monterrey, Nuevo León’s post-industrial capital. Published as a companion to an exhibition at MARCO, this photobook combines the visual narratives of twelve Mexican photographers with eleven thought-provoking essays, painting a vivid portrait of a city teetering between its industrial past, turbulent present, and uncertain future.

Timed to coincide with Nuevo León’s bicentennial as a free and sovereign state in 2025, the project is both a celebration and a critique, a love letter to Monterrey’s resilience and a sharp examination of its struggles: water scarcity, urban sprawl, inequality, and the scars left by violence.

The book pairs each photographic series with an essay, creating a dual exploration of Monterrey’s challenges and contradictions through image and text. The synergy between the two transforms it from mere documentation into a layered, curatorial investigation. From Aristeo Jiménez’s raw portrayal of working-class life to Yvonne Venegas’s opulent glimpses into San Pedro Garza García’s elite circles, the photographers traverse vastly different terrains, while essayists like César González-Aguirre, Irmgard Emmelhainz, and Julián Herbert provide insightful analysis. This collaboration elevates the work into something more than a snapshot of a city, it becomes a powerful dialogue on how photography can hold up a mirror to society while also wielding the scalpel.

The foreword by Alfonso González Migoya, MARCO’s Board President, sets the stage with an ambitious call for photography to transcend its traditional role. Highlighting its ability to capture complexities that words alone cannot, González Migoya frames the exhibition as a tool of research, reflecting Monterrey’s contradictions with clarity. Melissa Segura Guerrero’s preface, written on behalf of the Ministry of Culture, underlines photography’s role in Nuevo León’s bicentennial identity, a bridge between history and future. Manuel Rivero Zambrano’s prologue grounds the project in Monterrey’s post-industrial context, spotlighting Aristeo Jiménez as the beating heart of the exhibition. With his previously unpublished works forming the core, Jiménez’s images spark a dialogue with contemporaries such as Oswaldo Ruiz, Alejandro Cartagena, and Sofía Ayarzagoitia.

Taiyana Pimentel Paradoa’s introduction adds a poetic touch, drawing on a polaroid of Cerro de la Silla under a thunderstorm, a symbol of Monterrey’s enduring spirit amidst urban sprawls. This photograph, she argues, inspired the curators’ exploration of photography’s vital role in shaping narratives of uncertainty. Ramonetti and Maillé’s opening essay expands on this theme, challenging Monterrey’s triumphalist ethos of meritocracy and entrepreneurship. They critique this narrative for glossing over the city’s glaring disparities, ecological deterioration, and violence, all framed within a broader conversation on industrial dominance and decline.

The photographic contributions form a kaleidoscope of perspectives, each revealing sides of the city’s story. Jiménez’s series, only those who wish survive, captures Monterrey’s marginalised nightlife, focusing on the resilience of trans women and sex workers in its gritty barrios. His black-and-white 35mm images offer a raw counter-narrative to the city’s polished business image, while Venegas shifts the gaze to San Pedro Garza García, exposing the scale and ostentation of its elite in her series In San Pedro. These contrasts are stark and deliberate, showing two sides of a city shaped by inequality.

Other highlights include Alejandro Cartagena’s Lost City, which tackles suburban sprawl and water scarcity through repetitive imagery of identical houses and dry riverbeds, both beautiful and haunting in their uniformity. Oswaldo Ruiz’s All that is solid (melts into air) critiques extractivism, turning his lens on the quarries that have ground Monterrey’s mountains into cement dust, eroding both physical and cultural landscapes. Estética Unisex’s series the corporate face of humans and the human face of the corporation reflects the precarity of labour, capturing young workers assimilated into corporate facades, their individuality gradually fading.

Sofia Ayarzagoitia’s empathetic portraits of migrants in Your skin are your home reveal intimate glimpses into displacement and survival, while Stefan Ruiz’s Slowness, quickness and other scenarios celebrates Monterrey’s kolombia subculture, where cumbia rebajada rhythms defy the city’s relentless pace. Loreto Villarreal’s understated images of MARCO staff in Loreto’s Ritual Essay offer a behind-the-scenes look at the museum’s lifeblood, humanising its operations. Salomé Fuentes’s powerful series examines the sites of drug war violence, forcing viewers to confront the normalisation of loss.

The essays paired with each photographic series dissect these visual narratives with sharp insight. Morales Carrillo critiques euphemisms like “collateral damage” through Orwellian analysis, while González-Aguirre writes vividly on Jiménez’s work, weaving tales of tattooed teens and industrial echoes. Velázquez’s writing transforms Rodríguez’s exploration of a pre-war nightclub into sonic memories, capturing its surreal blend of survival and excess. Each essay amplifies its companion photographs, achieving a delicate balance that gives the overall project depth without overshadowing the visuals.

Visually, the book feels like a rich tapestry, offering a variety of styles, from gritty monochrome to lush interiors, stark landscapes, and archival images. The inclusion of historical materials from CONARTE and the Fototeca de Nuevo León adds layers to the city’s story, juxtaposing past and present to underline the book’s core theme: the future, as its title suggests, is unwritten.

Still, the project’s vast scope invites scrutiny. Can twelve photographers and eleven essayists truly encapsulate Monterrey’s sprawling contradictions? The focus on selects subcultures and neighbourhoods, while insightful, leaves room for more voices. The reliance on institutional and government frameworks may also hint at a curated agenda, tempered by official narratives. Yet, these critiques are minor compared to the book’s bold ambition, tackling Monterrey’s realities head-on and presenting them with honesty.

Nuevo León: The Future is Unwritten is a triumph of curatorial vision. It doesn’t pretend to solve the city’s challenges, but it forces urgent questions, how do we navigate uncertainty? How can we reconcile progress with its price? Monterrey, forged in industry yet now eroding into air, finds its fractured present reflected in this project, offering paths to an unwritten tomorrow. For anyone willing to look closely, this book is more than a catalogue, it’s an invitation to see, feel, and think anew.

Regards

Alex