GHOST

Ghost, Exit Zero, Anthony, Texas, May 18, 2023

Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman

This is the first photograph I’ve taken in a long time that actually means anything to me.
I’ve been a photographer for fifty-five years. So that’s kind of a sad statement, eh?
I’ve been teaching photography at New Mexico State University for the past seventeen years. It takes its toll.
All the energy I ever put into my own work and the work of the work that allowed me to live off of it gradually but inevitably goes into inspiring others to do what I used to do.
Anyone that teaches can tell you there are some great students that make it all worth it. They’ll probably also tell you there are a plethora of others that didn’t treasure the gift you gave. It’s part of “the biz.” You roll with it.
I do think there comes a time, a rubicon, where your own creative desires become endangered. It’s not just the endless repetition about the mechanics, and the history and the nuances of doing photography, it’s also the endless drivel of academia, the business of being in a university, the committees that mean nothing to me personally, seemingly a bubble of detachment from reality, the occasional obscenity of human behavior, acting so massively vicious because, the stakes are so low. Politics are vicious and low. The feeling of irrelevance can be very high.

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Isabel Gilmore: Woman of the Empty Lands

Isabel Gilmore, Salt Flat Cafe, Salt Flat, Texas, 1988

Story and photograph by Bruce Berman

There were people who grew up along two lane highways who had, at most, radios to connect them to the outer world. They lived in quietude. A car would occasionally pass on U.S. 62/180. Some would stop.
I stopped.
She put down her local paper (from Van Horn, I think it was). She made eggs, fried some hash browns and made toast. Everything she was and did was from a past time. These were moments of grace.
She was far from being a receding type, had lots of questions, and I think her main form of being informed was interviewing anyone who stopped at her cafe. She had been doing this for a long time and I think her parents did it before her.

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DOORWAY TO NOWHERE



Beautiful ruin, Tornillo, Texas, 2021

Photograph/Text by Bruce Berman

The difference between the ruins of 80 years ago and the ruins 80 years from now, is there won’t be any ruins 80 years from now. Nothing built now will endure and nowhere that it’s built will be left fallow.
Can you imagine a photographer, in 2101, stopping, putting up his/her tripod, waiting for the perfect light, on a 7 Eleven or a Carino’s or a McDonald’s that was built in 2021 or 2007 or even 1999?
It was bad to begin with! Flat. Textureless. Corporately linear and featureless. Purposeful mirthlessness.
Maybe on Mars.

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PHEW! WE’RE BACK!

THIS SITE HAS BEEN DOWN FOR TWO MONTHS. WE’RE BACK. THE SITE WAS SUSPENDED AND IT TOOK THIS LONG TO RESTORE IT TO TOTAL BUG-FREE HEALTH. TO BE HONEST THERE HAS BEEN VERY LITTLE “ME.” THE BORDER BLOG WEBMASTER, MANNY RIVERA, FOUGHT THE MALWARE FORCES OF EVIL… AND AS HE ALWAYS DOES, BROUGHT US BACK TO LIFE.
SO GLAD WE’RE HERE. SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE.

1951 Ford hood, Navajo Reservation, Utah, 1974

So here we are, searching for borders again. It’s been a long time since I began this photo journey in 1968. First there was the “border” of Appalachians in Chicago.
Then there was the Five Nations of Oklahoma and the last refuge of the Buffalo in southwest Oklahoma.
Eventually I found my way to El Paso/Juárez. That one’s took thirty-five years plus.
And now?
Not sure. Usually I have wandered into my “forward.” Been stuck lately, taking care of business, being a professor, thinking, living in the old paradigm.
I suspect it’ll be that way again. I’ll bumble into the “next.”
I just mentioned -above- all the stuff that’s in the rearview mirror.
Looking out, over the hood… well you have to get the car into first gear first.
It’s coming.
Stay tuned. The Border Blog is back.
So am I.

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MAD MEN: END OF THE INNOCENCE

 

50’s Merc. Photograph ©BruceBerman2015

Mad Men, the 50s and the Waiting

Text and photograph by Bruce Berman

Mad as in nutty mad…mad because they were delirious with the defiance of convention while simultaneously becoming the masters of the Establishment (and remain so, truly understanding what motivates consumers -and that became all of us- and then getting them to consume), mad because they were about to be jetting and tail-finning and mini-skirting and drinking and potting and pushing every moral convention ever taught and/or learned out the back door into what became the waste dump of the 60s. They were insane with the possibilities and not burdened by the weight of the previous two generations (The Great One of the Depression and the War). They were mad and intoxicated and wild, like their cars, huge, with unlimited horsepower, design that was plastic and chrome and sweeping, made with materials never heard of before. Theory knew no limits. Everyone felt a little “illegal,” yet, invited to the table. Being ecclectic was safe. Just keep consuming, it’ll all be all right. Yes, they were nutty mad and flew high, never thinking there could be a landing, mad with the waiting for the coming fall, the doubt, the emptiness, the great Genericide, ergo, The End Of The Innocence (Don Henley). They became us. Post Mad. The masters of data, overthink, and, compliance.

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Nuts

 

Giant Pistachio, Alamogordo, New Mexico, Jan. 2013

CORRECTION:

Just got a very welcome announcement from a Border Blog viewer. He pointed out that the above image is a representation of a pistachio not a pecan.

Correct!

We don’t have much of a defense, but really, when this was posted on April  24, your Border Blog photographer, Bruce Berman, wasn’t much Bruce Berman either. That’s what happens when one “does what one has got to do as opposed to doing what you do.”

We at Border Blog are pleased to announce that the real Bruce Berman is back, on the border, three blocks from the bridge, in his decaying ruin, tape -metaphorically- over his mouth, no longer talking about photography but living his life, and making images that, hopefully, will do, as we wrote almost a decade ago, stating our intention to (see the “About” tab above),  “…cover the news, opinions and culture of the 2000 mile border of Mexico and the United States, concentrating on the epicenter of El Paso and Juarez. The Border Blog is not meant to be a news source as much as it is meant to be a news ‘feel’.”

Thank you MB and thank you Bruce (but tsk tsk on your caption!).

-The Editors

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Gator Skin And Diamonds And Color

 

Gator skin and diamonds, El Paso – May 2011

©Bruce Berman

El Paso –Six blocks to the border. There are diamonds. Well, they ought to be diamonds. He says they cost $250. I believe him. Sunday drive. Family in the Dodge. Stylin’ on Paisano Street by Bowie (Boooie). If you know El Paso you know the references. If you don’t it wouldn’t matter. Chuco street.

One of the riddles of photography for me is that every once in awhile there is an image that must be in color. Most everything I see and shoot is in B/W, but every once in awhile…

This dude is in color.

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Garry Winogrand And Milliseconds Of The Oblique

Garry Winogrand. Off kilter. Off beat. And right on in capturing the milliseconds of the oblique.
Watch this video and think about Garry lassoing the non-monumental. He was a wild puppy and full of life. Just enjoy the fun.

A memoir: Meeting Garry Winogrand
by Bruce Berman

Garry was a photographer and a winner of prizes: three Guggenheim Fellowship Awards (1964, 1969, and 1979) and a National Endowment of the Arts Award in 1979. He was a street guy and he was, most of all, a New Yorker. His photos reek “NYC.” He was hugely famous and revered in the 1970s and 80s.

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Bad Boy In The ‘hood

 

1939 Chevrolet, Lincoln School Park, El Paso – March 2010

Sunday in Lincoln School Park. Everyone’s there: the vatos, the old low riders, the young low riders, Las Chicas, los ninos, las familias and me.

Got to get that building open again!

Fuzz cruised through, took a look, cruised out again (ándale).

As it oughta to be.

The parque was alive, tranquillo and sharp. El barrio vive otra vez…best it’s been in years.

As it oughta be…

For a slideshow:

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Remnants del ‘Hood

Remnants del ‘hood, El Paso – March 14, 2010

There ain’t much left.

Mostly the pickins’.

This was the Grand Highway, the Spanish Trail, the beginning of the end of the long journey from East to West or vice-versa, the tip of the arrow into the dart board that was Downtown El Paso.

Interstate came and went around, population moved to new turf, businesses followed, but the old Highway 80  lingered, going from Consumer to Warehouse and beyond. A modern day Babitt, Ohio.

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El Paso Dreamin’

 

Town for sale, El Paso – Feb. 2010

From the movie The Border:

Marcy (Valerie Perrine) : (Showing her Border Patrol husband brochures about El Paso, trying to talk him into moving there, at their breakfast table, in Los Angeles) Honey sometimes you gotta dream.

Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson) : (Pausing, furrowing his now signature brow) I never dreamed no El Paso.

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New Mexico Juke

 

Las Cruces, NM/Dec. 14, 2009

Juke boxes.

They’re  a “warm fuzzy,” no matter how you cut it.

No?

I just wanna dance. It’s the holidays.

Time to dance. And stare at the wall (and the Web) and have luxurious long lunches (and personally enriching) with good friends, now, in the rush of my life, long overlooked.

I’m in New Mexico and there’s a lot of land here, still. Lots of space to dance, and write and spin and dream…in New Mexico, lots of space to scream at the sky and to yell, “No mas el mundo, basta!”

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Que Miras Musico: Change

Musicos, El Paso – April 2009

Wary eyes.

Everyone’s wary, in El Paso/Juarez, these days. The border is at war, with itself, with it’s two yin/yang sides, with the Interiors of each of the two sides.

Everyone’s wondering where it’ll end, where they will fall on the have and have not scale, what’ll be left of this little rough Shangri La (not a Shangri La of paradise but a refuge for those who have fallen from paradise. Sort of a suburb of Shangri La).

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Alameda Street Showboat: Blast From The Past

 

Alameda Street Showboat, El Paso-1987

Alameda Street is about (what’s this “about,” stuff?) to get stomped. Progress. New Hospital and Medical School down the Street. Progress.

‘ta bien, really. Time to move on. One thing about Urban Renewal and Plans: we have had the best of it and now you can have the rest. The next “blight,” that I move to -older and wiser now- there will be no Forwarding Address.

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A Valentine (in Texas)

Cracked window in Valentine, Texas-Jan. 9, 2009

There I am, tooling through the vast landscape of West Texas, working for an English language newspaper working out of Abu Dubai, Arab Emirates. Don’t ask. I’m not sure I understand the assignment. Something about Bush returning to Texas and illustrating what two brothers, who were doing a road trip, saw (except, according to my editor, they were really bad photographers).  What that has to do with West Texas, I can’t figure.

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Spin Balance landscape

Spin Balance Landscape, Chaparral, NM-August 2008

Space. Glorious space. Wonk yer brain but we all need more space. Maybe because we wonk our brains so much. This is from the funklands of southern New Mexico. It looks right across at the slim tip of West Texas that is El Paso. Juarez, Chihuahua is the horizon.

Space. This is the Tender Mercy of No Man’s Land.

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Santa? Juarez needs one

Santa en Juarez-Dieciembre 2008

Venga Santa….come on!

If ever there was a place (other than certain parts of Africa right now) that need some kind of Devine Intervention, this is it.

Come on Santa! Forget the regalos. Paz, baby. Bring on the Peace.

If there is a Santa, bring on the Peace.

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Roof Cam: Borderlands Suite

Roof Cam #8, El Paso – June 2008

I’m driving around my city. I’m moving my operation a little to the north of where I am now, north of the border, north of the borderline, north of my reality. I’m already feeling separation depression. So I drive around my turf of 30 years. I don’t have to look anymore, I know the bricks, the cracks, the fault lines. I’ve shot them a million times and re-shot them. I stick the camera out the sunroof and let the car become part of the camera. The car is the camera. and I tour my myth. This is between me and it, not meant for others. All of my work is getting there now, it’s between me and it.

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