1st OF THE 3rd

Southside El Paso, February 27, 2024

Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman

Dodged the bullet again. Well, this time there is no ‘explainin’ it so it’s fair to say, a hand deflected the fatal bullet.
Another chance.
Haven’t been doing photography much–for myself–in recent years. Been teaching. 34 semesters and most days in between spent on working at it. Caught up with me. Every word that went out came out of somewhere, somewhere where ghosts dance, that place deep inside where who we are actually lives. I built that up for years. Can one afford to let it go, driveled out in a million repetitions? And, for what? On February 12 a bomb exploded in my chest during my first class of the day. I taught my way through the whole class while The Reaper toyed with me, as God stood by and watched me gamble. Idiot! Why would I think God would intervene for a fool?
It wasn’t my time it turns out. Not now. Not yet. Why? All the right pieces fell together on the timeline, miraculous people showed up, the traffic parted ways for Mary’s defacto EMS Hyundai, and colleague Darren, always quiet, protecting his genius, appeared. Navy man. He all but carried me to the car then went into the building and with the precision of a true leader, with his cellphone, assembled the “troops,” at the nearby hospital, the cardiac team. Mary battled noon traffic. I was in and out, almost gone. We got there and Dr. Miracle, Abdul, his Rock ‘n Roll med team, waiting, like a great band about to play the once in a lifetime anthem; Lights Out.

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RUNNING DOG

Running Dog, El Paso, November 2023

Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman

I thought I was bringing “the border” into homes that knew it not.
I no longer think that.
I remember an acquaintance, at an exhibition I had, coming up to me after the show and talk and saying, “Now I really know the border and I’ve lived here all my life.”
I was flattered and felt great gratitude. After all, that was my intention in photography, to show and tell what others didn’t see or know.
He then said, I’d buy a photograph, but my wife just couldn’t see one that fit her new color scheme for our living room.
I didn’t know what to say. What could you say?
I understood that when he said he finally “knew the border,” he actually meant he finally could see how he could use what I saw and made for his own needs and wants.
¿Interesante, eh? It’s OK, but I hope for more.
I’ve come to know that most people overlay themselves on the border–maybe on all photography–and for them whatever is there is what is already embedded there, within them, no matter what the image shows.
So be it.
I look for coherence in what is incoherent and hope that someone–anyone–sees what I saw, felt what I felt, but most importantly, comes to know what I know from it.
I have have no expectations.

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POLISH GYM SHOES 1971

July 11, 2023 No Comments

Smoking Man, diner at State and Ohio Streets, Chicago, 1971

Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman

This was the very beginning of my career, when I first realized what I wanted to be … a photographer. Not much has changed since then. This is exactly the kind of photograph I like to make, the kind of experience I like to have. Me on the prowl, encountering a person on the fringe, direct eye contact. The only thing I do now that I did not do then is to get more info about a person, really get to know them. At that time, and for many many years afterwards, I was just satisfied with getting the photograph. As time has gone on I now realize that that is incomplete. It’s the photograph and the text that matter, so that the person photographed is honored, not just used. Maybe that reflects aging, learning the world is not all about me but about me being in the world, about respect for others, maybe just about being a real documentary photographer.
So, here I am, 42 years later and I don’t know who he is, where he was from, what the name of the diner was, what he did for a living, exactly when the date was, etc., i.e., the 5Ws that any journalist knows are essential.
A detail I never noticed before, is his shoes. Believe it or not they are meaningful to me. In my old south side neighborhood, these are the kind of shoes we’d buy every few years. They were our main shoes (except for dress shoes). These were the “better ones,” because they have finished leather. Ours were the exact same 10 lace model but a cheaper brand, and the leather on those was called “rough out.”
Why am I talking about shoes? 

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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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LUCHADOR BATERIAS

Luchador Baterias, Alameda Street, El Paso, Texas, 2022 ©Bruce Berman

Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman

Muralismo was a political art protest movement, strong the 1960s through the 2000s. Increasing, murals,. and mural artists are not only accepted throughout American communities, but, often, artists are sought out to create murals on businesses large and small.
Why not!
They’re powerful, colorful and add a touch of “the ‘hood,” to seemingly unhood establishments.

They reek of “Down With The People!”
There are a lot of artists out there and a lot of art schools producing a lot of artists.
More and more, in the actual ‘hood, murals are just commercial signs, sans political and cultural content.
Whatever! At least they aren’t plastic and mass produced, like so much else that has crept into our culture.
And, in the ‘hood, muralismo is still going on, with heart.

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UNCANCELLATION

Cancellation #93, Mom’s Kodak film, Chicago, 1950s

I once did an entire series of photographs called “Cancellations.”
It started because one day I was looking at a stack of shipping boxes of my photographs that I had sent to various galleries and museums (pre Internet) that had been summarily rejected. Thanks. No thanks, return to sender. There were a lot of stamps on those heavy boxes. The post office cancellations were ruthless, slashing, colorful. It’s like the post office knew I was unworthy, as well. I half jokingly wondered if the galleries hadn’t done it themselves.
I got lucky here and there, exhibited them for awhile. Dallas. Houston. Cologne, Germany. The art world thought they had found a new star. I knew I was a fraud.

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UNDEFINED PERSONALITIES AND THE BRIDGE

 

Guy with a pipe, (á la Puente series), El Paso, April 2015
Guy with a pipe, (á la Puente series) El Paso, April 2015. Photograph ©BruceBerman2015

Text and Photo by Bruce Berman

 

No telling what and who will come over the Cordoba bridge that links El Paso, Texas with its sister city Juárez, Chihuahua.

In this case, crossing from south to north, was Spencer.

Pipe, a hat that said “F___ Off,” aged Doc Marten’s, punk rock labels every where,  he is as ecclectic as the border. In a strange way he, is the border: neither this or that, neither Mexican or American, neither barrier nor passageway.

A friend once called the border a metaphor for a person who has “an undefined personality.”

Looking at Spencer -and some others (in my mirror!)- I’m thinking it’s a place for very defined personalities.

The problem is that it’s really difficult to say exactly what they are.

Which brings us back to “undefined.”

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The Old New Juarez

Juarez Loteria
Loteria de Juarez. Photograph ©BruceBerman2013

The New Juarez.

Everyone is talking about it. A new day, full of new promise. Many acquaintances tell me about all the new bars and cantinas. That Juarez will rise again.

This morning, Easter morning, two bodies were found hanging from a bridge in central Juarez. The victims were young, scruffy, boys with no names.

Hanging, like crucifixion, is a public and humiliating death. A death after death, the person shamed, rendered helpless, publicly. This is death with a message.

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Whiffs: I Can See Tomorrow

 

Mariachi, Juárez, 2002

There was a day when you could think of Juarez and think in color. I get whiffs of it lately, but one is so cognizant that under that shiny surface is a black and white heart that has been ripped open for all to see and it will take a long time fill with the energy and joy that was -and will be again- the hallmark of Ciudad Juarez. It will happen. It is happening now. A generation has now come that learned to live abajo, and carefully. There has been damage. No one can live under that cloud forever.

It’s nice to look back, now and again. But here, on the border, it has been years since people have allowed themselves to look forward.

There are “whiffs.”

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Unhappy Crowd With Tarot Cards

The streets of Juárez abound with life again.

The “Cartel War” is over.

The war for justice and integrity in government, the war to develop a country that doesn’t need a drug transporting business as it’s second most important economy (after petroleum), is not over and won’t be for the foreseeable future.

On the streets of Juárez, there is a strange mix: Old people who couldn’t get out, the poor that couldn’t get out, the young that didn’t know there was anywhere to go to and babies!

There are a lot of babies in their teenage parents’ arms these days. In the streets in from of the Mercado Reforma there is this strange blend of young parents weighing babies in their arms, interspersed with the very old, interspersed with prostitutes, interspersed with an economy that is not longer threatened by the incursion of “the franchises.” Franchises bailed out of Juárez years ago, when the war began, in 2011.

This isn’t the Juárez of the glamour 1950s or the boom boom 1960s and their international factories, or of the up and down 1970s and 1980s with the rise of the licenciado middle class, nor of the “we are almost first world” Juárez of the 1990s and beyond.

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The Shocking Man

 

Shock Man, El Paso, 2014
Shock Man, El Paso ©BruceBerman2004

This man shocks people in bars! He takes his battery operated tool around and for five bucks looks for masochists who, drunk (or insane?), pay him to turn up the juice, hit the button and let ‘er rip..

It takes all kinds, no?

Ah Humanity!

And it takes someone to recognize certain kinds of Humanity and let ‘er rip…for…five bucks!

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La Familia Hernandez: A Short History Of The Causes Of War

La Familia Hernandez, Juarez. ©BruceBerman1995

Commentary by the Editor

Juarez, Chih., Mex. — So how did this Cartel War begin and how does it end?
The Border Blog will not answer that today. We look for the things that make the heart tick and leave the fancy thinking to those that make these messes in the first place.
Roughly, for me, it began a long time ago, when the people who have  most of the marbles understood that they didn’t have to do a thing about bringing along another class of people who had hardly any marbles at all. Impunity. No apologies. In Juarez the maquila industry began when someone figured out that Labor was a cheap product that Mexico had a lot of and that it could be exchanged for some major profit. Of course nothing so crass as that was said. Rather, this was the bright new day that would lead to a burgeoning “middle class,” and bring everyone up from the bottom. So they said.  So the “development” of Juarez began. The powers that be brought willing companies looking for labor and they delivered “labor.” This labor, also known as the citizens of Mexico came from the far flung corners of Mexico. They had nothing else to do and would work at any price, went the theory. Everyone would be happy. You move here, we’ll give you subsistence (and societal dislocation), and we’ll go to the bank. Everyone will be happy.

Right?

When I first started photographing in the maquila factories of Juarez in the early 1980’s the salary in a maquila was $5 per day. Today it’s a little over $7. A full two dollar increase in 20 years. Imagine!

It wasn’t sustainable then and it isn’t now.
The promise of some kind of job, of rising above downright depraved poverty, was strong and people flocked to the border factories. First from Veracruz, then from Durango, then from Torreon and on and on.

If you were a Mexicano and wanted to improve your life without the terrible alternative of actually crossing the border and trying to make it work in El Norte, you headed to the maquilas of Juarez or Tijuana or Nuevo Laredo. If you made that journey you left your culture and customs behind. This was the brave new world.

Bienvenidos campesinos.

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The View South #421

The View South #421

The View South #421, July 2014

Flags are down in Parque Chamizal. Wind must be up and hopefully a little rain. Just a whisper of a season change. Not yet. But not all that far off either. ‘ta bien. The View South. Days come and go. Then years. Then decades. Then…? I turned my back on the past a long time ago. People tell me that’s good. Bible says it too. Do they really mean it? 

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Twitter Tweets Police Kidnappers in Jalisco

Editor’s Note:

Check this video out.
When Americans talk about the violence in Mexico they often view the situation through “western” eyes, thinking of Good Guys v. Bad Guys.
As this Al Jazeera report shows, the conflict is often between Bad Guys and Badder Guys and the public -the oppressed people of Mexico- have to stand on the sidelines, knowing but unable to alter the situation.
This video asks, Where do you turn when there is no one to turn to?

Commentary by Bruce Berman / Video by ©Al Jazeera 2014

There’s something happening in journalism.

When Aljazeera -who shouldn’t give a hoot about what’s happening in Mexico- publishes a well done piece on police kidnapping in Mexico, when Mexican journalists go ahead and publish their own work, under duress, knowing that to publish is to perish, and increasingly the xenophobic U.S. press dithers on entertainment and cheesy presidential inanities, we are talking about a new arrangement of the deck chairs on the the good ship journalism.

The truth is that most American newspapers and magazines aren’t undergoing the huge transformation they are experiencing in a vacuum. It’s not that hey are not irrelevant. They are merely irrelevant as the source for hard news (at a minimum) that relies on being the “go to” media.
For the most part, they are not that any longer.
If there is one source “out there,” it will be Tweeted or Posted on some social media site, within minutes, and then the fun begins. From there, people will Retweet it (RT), add links or complimentary sources and then the multiplier of social media begins. The question isn’t, Are you getting the news, but, rather, How much can you take?
Of course the eternal existential question remains, What happens when there is no longer a source of information (such as the New York Times. Sky News, CNN or Fox, i.e the “media giants?
This is not likely.

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Segundo Barrio Yo Yo Boy

 

 

Segundo barrio Yo Yo boy, Halloween 2011

Text by Bruce Berman (in full snide mode)

Halloween is The Great Day in El Segundo barrio. The ‘hood comes alive. People are pouring over the bridges heading from Juarez on the candy quest. People in the neighborhood put on the costumes and come out of invisibility. The first block of America (6th and El Paso) is a riot of laughing and color and wild abandon.

Nothing is sure on this border in this neighborhood anymore. “They” are back! The Developers. “The 180s” aren’t around on this day. The Developers, their Pol puppies, the Gov. employee “Good Germans,” even the The Do Gooders (even if they are really the Do Badders). That’s what I have come to call them all. They say something and if you want to find out what they just said just think 180 degrees opposite from what it was. Most of them are up in Kern Place handing out candy, their yearly contact with the rabble. They’re all afraid of the people when they have fun.

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Lou Reed: R.I.P. On The Wild Side

 

Lou Reed opens his photo exhibition entitled ‘Lou Reed’s New York’ at gallery Serieuze Zaken Studios in Amsterdam on October 11th, 2007. photo by Olaf Kraak/epa/Corbis

 

 

LOU LOU LOU

The News floored me.

It’s like New York vanished.

Guilliani couldn’t scrub it.

Bloomberg couldn’t.

It’s your city Lou.

You were the grit and the soul man.

So now it’s time to fly away.

“How do you Speak to an Angel” you wrote and asked:

You just say – Hello, hello, hello Baby

Check it out. See you there. Say hi to Andy.

Miss you. The thought of you.

You were always a kick in my pants.

Walk on the wild side.

No doubt.

The great beyond.

Somewheresville.

See you there.

 

Read more on Lou: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/lou-reed-through-the-years-20120302/lou-reeds-new-york-0842024#ixzz2izX3o2uER.I.P.

 

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The Fast Disappearing Authentic Segundo Barrio: Mailbox Kids

ChucoStreet, Mailbox Kids in Segundo Barrio, 2012

Mailbox Kids, Segundo Barrio, El Paso, 2012

©Bruce Berman

The Shrinking Segundo Barrio

by Bruce Berman

 

El Barrio, The Segundo, is shrinking.

It’s getting the squeeze. The squeeze has been coming for a century or more but it’s a full assault now, and a generation that had roots in the ‘hood, that was born of a time and place that demanded they fight, is no longer there in numbers and possibly not there in energy and historic resentment.

The neighborhood is being squeezed from the north with the Dreamland Downtown Plan back on Premium and from within. A proposed Science museum in the old Armijo School would be the death blow.

If the deathblow can be delivered to an already dead corpse.

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