Bruce Berman Bruce Berman

A Warm Farewell

A piece written to my photography students at the end of a fine semester at New Mexico State University. Forgive the “first person.” Originally posted on their class website at www.nmsu.documentaryshooters.com:

Brucini w/New Blan­ket from a Good Friend, El Paso –Dec. 9, 2009
So it comes to this, the semes­ter ends, we go our own way, we know more [...]

“Rats” in a bad spot (or is it pretty?)

Pretty spot/bad times-Juarez 2009
Juarez / October 2009
Murders continue.
Record year.
Day of the Dead is coming. Like every day hasn’t been that.
The streets have an eerie decay to them. Litter. Boarded up windows. Still a lot of hustle but the nights are empty and in the shadows are things no one wants to see.

I Am Free

Johnland,  El Paso – June 2009
Been thinking about this guy and borders and the idea of the Big Picture versus the small picture ever since I made it (the photo) this summer, on an almost rainy night, in the northeast section of town, out by the military base.
John Hughes.
Angry. Joyous. Funny. Dangerous. Sweet. Full of [...]

Murder Is A Teaching Moment (Editor Says…)

Local TV Handles Vilolence In Juarez (at least Art about violence)

SEE FULL VIDEO ABOUT THE ART CONTROVERSY:
>http://www.kvia.com/
>Go to page #6 of videos
>Hit:”Controversial border art makes waves”

Your Editor Stumbles Into a Defense Of Decapitated Heads (Art) At El Paso’s Library
July 9, 2009

Editor’s Note: Here is what they left on the “cutting room floor”

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 [...]

No Futbol War

“Maleno,” Juarez – March 2009
Juarez, March 13, 2009/ Estado Benito Juarez, Juarez, Chihuahua/Mexico
The Juarez Indios are a professional futbol team(soccer). They are in the middle of the Cartel Drug War. Much of the city of Juarez has rallied around the Indios, finding some “normalacy,” in the middle of the troubled Juarez violencia. Julio Daniel “Maleno” [...]

Border Magic Eye

Cordula at the fence, March 23, 2009
Anapra, NM/Colonia Anapra, Juarez, Chihuahua
Yesterday I worked with an incredible journalist from Der Spiegel (the German equivalent of Time). She is German, from the north of Germany. Works out of the DC Bureau. Sharp and smart and witty and ironic and puro journalist. We did a story at Fort [...]

Juarez Will Not End

Otra Linea in Juarez, March 2009
You start to wonder if it’ll ever end but it will end.
La violencia. The violence.

Sweet Border: Illegal and Bad

Sweet Border, Anapra, NM/Colonia Anapra, Juarez Chihuahua-Feb. 2009
Life goes on.
Mexico is a great pueblo. So is El Paso and southern New Mexico.
One reads the newspapers and one thinks the world has gone insane. Particularly here, on the border.

Lomas del Poleo revisited

Protest for Lomas del Poleo, El Paso-Jan. 2008
It was only a year ago that the plight of the people of Lomas del Poleo was the highest priority of cross border activist politics. The people were systematically being robbed of their land, their court actions were, basically, being stonewalled, the injustice of the top to the [...]