Mist and mirrors: facts and fictions

Mist and mirrors d’town, El Paso – 6:38:51pm/July 28, 2008

I am supposed to be packing right now. I have a job in another city. It starts in three weeks. I won’t be leaving. This corner, this light, these people, their shadows, have inveighed my life for an adulthood…a long time.

Continue Reading

Border fools and border delights: You gotta look hard

americo1lores.jpg

Americo with prayer shawl, yamulke and guitar,

Segundo barrio, El Paso – July 26, 2008

Why do I ever leave my loft?

Went to the gym where a friend of over three years, a retired professor at the local university, someone who has never displayed anything but kindness and goodwill, out of the clear blue, no warning, told me “…the Jews got what they deserved after all the stuff they did as bankers in Germany, don’t you think?”

Wha-a-a-a-a-a?!

Continue Reading

Mexico’s other border

SEE VIDEO: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/video/player?titleID=1372185572

Borders. North and south. Mexico is a yin yang of the first order.

See what’s going on on the southern border and get some insights into what’s going on on the northern one.

Article by the always interesting and powerful Charles Bowden with cut-to-the-bone humane photographs by superb Magnum shooter, Alex Webb.

Continue Reading

Juarez murders: it’s complicated

Protesting policeman, Juarez -March 2008

photograph by Julian Cardona

Photo and story by Julian Cardona

March 31, 2008

About 50 Juárez police officers protested what they consider the arbitrary arrests of fellow officers by the recently arrived Mexican army in ciudad Juarez. They were protesting the alleged framing of numerous officers on charges of drug possession.

Continue Reading

Immigration abuse never ends. Jacob Riis: Concerned Photographer

“Slept In That Cellar Four Years,” 1890-92

“Slept in the cellar (of a Ludlow Street tenement)

where the water was ankle deep on the mud floor”

View more work -and hear an excellent NPR audio clip- by the great Danish-American documentary photojournalist. He was one of the first to use “flash,” (first introduced in Germany in 1887). Riis cast the mold for what a “Concerned Photographer,” is, and launched a century of relevant, motivating and society-changing “witnessing.”

Editor’s Note:

For more images and audio clip: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91981589

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

Moving day ( a bad pun)

PHOTO OF THE WEEK (#1): May 16-23, 2008

Moving the man, Uptown (upper Broadway Street), Chicago, 1969

I have moving on my mind. I don’t do it often. When I do it is a reincarnation for the better or worse. I am about to do it. In so doing, I came up with this image from the boyhood of my life as a photographer. One of the very first. I still like the street puns.

Continue Reading