Over the next two weeks, Next City will unroll short profiles of 77 people, places and ideas that have changed cities this year. Together, they make up our 2012 Disruption Index. Forefront subscribers can download the Index in full as a PDF, complete with beautiful designs and graphics by Danni Sinisi. Readers who make a $75 donation to Next City will have a full-color printed copy of the Index mailed to them.
One of Latin America’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Alexander Apóstol uses photography and film to document the physical realm of the developing world. Born in Venezuela and now splitting his time between Caracas and Madrid, Apóstol’s work ranges from imagery of half-constructed buildings to the jaggedly stacked brick and block homes of typical Latin American neighborhoods. His photographs portray colloquial design in a straightforward way, but also emphasize some of its absurdities.
His first monograph, Tropical Modernity, focuses on Latin American modernism as it plays out in various contemporary cities. The suggestion of Apóstol’s work is that a physical modern architecture or design style is grossly out of line with social and political realities, where progress hasn’t followed the path left by the modernist movement. His work presents the sharp contrasts between the modern urbanism and architecture of these cities and the sociopolitical legacies that have led to corruption and marginalization. This work, in addition to other artistic pursuits, makes Apóstol one of the most interesting documentarians of urbanity in Latin America.
Nate Berg is a writer and journalist covering cities, architecture and urban planning. Nate’s work has been published in a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, NPR, Wired, Metropolis, Fast Company, Dwell, Architect, the Christian Science Monitor, LA Weekly and many others. He is a former staff writer at The Atlantic Cities and was previously an assistant editor at Planetizen.