Love Bug In The Border Desert
The Great Border Storm of 2011: El Paso – Juarez
The Great Border Storm of 2011, El Paso-Juarez
by Bruce Berman ©2011
EL PASO –It was an amazing storm. Hard to believe it happened. Zero temperatures (in El Paso!!!!). Ice. Snow. Irregular electricity. No internet. Intermittent Gas (for some people). Highways closed. Jobs (including mine. I haven’t been to NMSU since last Tuesday! Bummer! I like it) canceled. Everything closed. Voluntary curfew (requested). Went on for three to five days (depending on which part of this freaky happening we’re talking about, and, when it was all over, yesterday, it wasn’t over because there were major outages of water (I’m going to get that shower eventually…like today!).
Now I think it’ll be El Paso again and we’ll be in shorts T Shirts and swamp coolers, squishy asphalt, hoods up and steaming radiators and complaining about the heat in no time at all.
Like I said, it was like a dream and hard to believe it ever happened.
Artist, Marine, Steelworker, Truckdriver, Hip Guy
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©2010 Bruce Berman
EL PASO — Grave is a Renaissance man. He prowls the city spraying paint, rapping with passerby (me included), dreaming of new projects, checking out vacant walls that he or his kids can awaken, always lining up the next stuff, sharing philosophy, Being.
Dos Osos Goofin’
Angelica Looks Up
Angelica, Segundo barrio, El Paso – Oct. 18, 2010
EL PASO –Angelica Alvarez. A true believer. A believer in her faith. A believer in a better day. A believer in joy.
I noticed her as she worked her way down the street, engaging every person that she encountered, leaving each person she talked with a smile on their face, enthusiastically waving goodbye to her, they no longer strangers.
I followed her.
Letter to my friend: I’m On My Way Martin
Martin, man of dignity and courage, Lomas del Poleo, Summer 2009
Dear Martin,
I said I would be back to Lomas and I haven’t been back in a year now. It’s crazy. I drive to work in Las Cruces three times a week and I look to the west and I can see you, I can see Lomas, right there, the flat top mesa poking out from behind Cristo Rey.
No, I haven’t been back. I am sorry. Life caught up with me and I had to do my labors, take care of biz, run around like a chicken without a head. And, in the meantime, I have fallen in love with a photo project, far away from here, up in Nuevo Mexico, and I have given it a lot of my attention.
All weak excuses.
I said I’d be back and continue the work we began and I haven’t.
You -and sus vecinos, sus compañeros in Lomas del Poleo- are never out of my thoughts.
Do You Have Shares In Hell?
Street kids on Avenida Technologico, Juarez – 2010
Pictures?
More pictures of dead bodies in the streets of Juárez?
Hard to want to do. I’m not visiting. I live here. It’s better when you have to get the images for your boss/editor and then high-tail it to the airport.
But, I’m not working for a daily paper anymore.
Announcer
Salvador Valentino, Ring Announcer
El Paso, Texas – May 23, 2010
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:
Joy in the Gym (Sacred)
Joy#2, Segundo Barrio, Sagrado Corazon gym – El Paso
Sagrado Corazon gym. Sunday dance.
Kick it.
Kick it hombre!
Golpelo, vato viejo (no muy)!
Joy always seems to be somewhere near this gym. The ‘hood is really tattered now. Anything near the border is tattered or about to be.
But ya gotta dance, yeah?
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.
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.
El Dia de San Valentin
La “MC,” Lidia, San Valentin Beauty Show
El Paso – Feb. 13, 2010
El Dia de San Valentin/El Paso, Texas
Candy? Flowers? Lingerie?
Furgidaboutit!
Beauty!
Big day on the border. Everywhere now. Billions in tooth decay. Billions in flowers grown in eco-destroying third world corporate gardens.
Bah humbug (or whatever malapropism you say on Valentin’s Day)!
Father, Son, Babe
The ‘hood Is Still Good
Copia Street, Jan. 4, 2010
Four blocks to the bridge, to the border.
Lots of foot traffic. It comes and it goes, north then south.
The neighborhood is changing as the Medical Center becomes a reality, but it’s going to be hard to erase what the neighborhood is.
This mural, sneaked in on the side of a little building on a main street, in an alley, screams, We are alive!
Black Cross and Anarchy
5:10pm – December 30, 2009
Last block of America. Or is it the first?
Fifth Street and El Paso Street, El Paso, Texas.
This used to be happy street. It’s still a busy street. It’s the street where the downtown bridge from Juarez exits or, conversely, it is the street where you leave the United States and enter the bridge to Juarez.
There’s a strange urgency on this block now, on this border now, if you’re looking and listening these days. People try to get back to Juarez before dark. Dark is when the heavy killing begins. At least that’s the way it’s been for the last year. Lately, things are getting even crazier in Juarez. Burrito ladies shot in the middle of the street in broad daylight, children executed in plain sight, house invasions and retaliations. Hard to know when a “safe” time to be in Juarez anymore.
Cartel War?
It was.
Centro El Paso/Christmas
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Christmas en El Centro
My Window and Mi Compañeros a Sur: Season’s Greetings!
Guadalupe #41, El Paso – Dec. 18, 2009
This third floor window looks out onto the Cordova Bridge to Juarez, three blocks to the south. It’s the Season. Guadalupe, I will light you every night -and a string of Christmas lights too- for the rest of the holiday. If anyone in Juarez sees this, please wave at me, say hello, know I am with you and I am waving at you, too, and I will be visiting with you, soon.
Andale compañeros. Vida sobre todo.
Note: Yes Victoria, I tilted the frame!
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 for having known each other.
We have had our ambitions and we have had our disappointments but, what we mostly have had, I think, is a journey of discovery.
At least, it’s has been that way for me.
I was given something wonderful today: a very warm blanket from a very good and thoughtful friend (she had heard that my Loft is frigid in the winters, a concrete old factory building of a palace, not designed to be lived in).
I stopped on the way home for some Christmas lights. First time in my life I have bought any. How can one not succumb to this Season when such kind gestures are extended?
El Centro de El Paso
I kiss you, SNOW!
El Puente Cordova, El Paso/Juarez, November 30, 2009
Snow!
A rarity in this no-mans-land.
Hardship. No one is ready for it. Not man nor beast nor domicile. The aftermath will be unnavigable mud on some of the streets in Juarez: there’s always a fire from people using heaters they’re not used to using; tons of $14.95 coats will be sold on El Paso Street and Stanton Street and the various Fallas Paredes tiendas all over town; car crashes aplenty; you can bet on it. The homeless freeze. Rich people buy juniper logs for five bucks apiece to have their moment of apres ski. Everyone will adapt eventually, but by then we’ll be back in T-shirts and shorts; my loft turns to a freezer; life is anew. This is a place of the sun, not really set up for anything else.
Alameda Street (Again)
Alameda Street #91, El Paso- November 2009
This street is changing. New Medical School and renewed Medical Center just down the block. Oh yeah they have the Grand Plan.
But the south side has its own Plan and the hot paint keeps coming!
Yeah man, this street is the Grand Plan dealing with the No Plan, the natural plan, the reality plan of the people who hang here, hanging onto the funk, south side people.
Like me.
Like Letty.
Been on this street for a long time.
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 love, hate and ambivalence. Boozed up, half mad, half brilliant.
“I am free,” he shouts at the night. “I am free and I am in hell.”
I ask him if he ever goes across the border?
“I am borderless,”he replies, “aren’t you?” He shakes his hand and does a twirl, almost stepping into busy Saturday night traffic.
He does a little dance and steps so close to the edge of the curb that I go to grab him but he spins back onto the sidewalk and does a very theatrical bow. He is a tight rope walker and it looks like he has done this toe dance forever.
The Segundo Horseshoe
Hot Skinny Shadow
D’town El Paso, 104 degrees, July 28, 2009
It’s cookin’ in El Paso.
104!
Hard to breath.
But people do.
You keep moving.
Dignified Man #2
Dignified Man #2, Segundo Barrio/El Paso – July 11, 2009
There are a lot of viejos in the Sagundo barrio. They get around.
There are a lot of kids too.
Like it always was but just fewer. It’s the heart of this isolated town.
The Circle On Seventh Street
Sagundo barrio, El Paso – July 14, 2009
Needed a trip to see someone “rich,” get to my home, my ‘hood, the epicenter.
A day -part of a day- in Americaland was enough for me. Felt sick. Left wobbly. Everyone comes to that place where you’ve got to weigh the illness of your certainties against the “healthiness (or lack of it)” of your insecurities.
I’m there.
I head to the pueblo.
Hand In The ‘Hood
Hand In The Hood, El Paso – 2009
Mohawk Passing Through Cheese Department (and El Paso)
