EDDIE’S CAR

Eddie’s Car, Uptown Chicago (ChiTown Journal book), 1971, ©Bruce Berman

Photograph and text by Bruce Berman

Autumn 1971.
Eddie Geary got a new/old car.
He was scrounging the ‘hood looking for tires and rims. Not sure it ever got running.
I knew him for two years and the car never moved. The neighborhood never changed (until years later and the gentry came in, upped the equity and got rid of the Eddie Gearys).
Don’t know whatever happened to Eddie. Did he go back to Kentucky? Did he get up and out of the ghetto? Did he get a car of his dreams?
Don’t know. Wish I knew.
The photo series Uptown was more specifically about Appalachian migrants to Chiocago from Kentucky and Tennessee. It was my first documentary project. I wasn’t as good as the subject was, but I go my start. I just finished a book that contain the images. I’m lkooking for a publisher. It’as called the ChiTown Journal. Itr was my first “border ” project.
The border I refer to wasn’t a physical line but, actually, the line between immigrants to a foreign land and how their otherness, their language difference marginalizes them, leaves them open to exploitation and and makes them vulnerable to a social and lkegal system that does not favor them.

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CONFIDENT GUY

Confident guy, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1974
by ©Bruce Berman

Vintage. Yeah that’s me now. Vintage.
I’ve spent the last six months digging out photos from “back when,” and designing, editing and assembling a book. It’s the second book we’re producing and is being published by. Border Blog Press.
Its called BACKLAND, a collection of photos and a few stories about my ramblings and image-making from 1975-2000.
I was gonna call it a “book about nothing,” but, as in all books, it started to have a life of its own and its become a book about something. Can’t wait for you -the world- to see it. Todd, above, is in there and a whole lot of other people and places.
It’s coming. I’ll be tooting my horn when it’s up and running.

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