JUAREZ IN SMOKE
Blight? Schmite! Leave El Barrio alone.
Guadalupe(s), Segundo barrio, El Paso-Oct. 2008
El barrio is a community. Bruised. Not what it was. Sitting on the border and prime target of speculators, er…ah…read that as “Developers,” but still standing. Go back and ask anyone in any American city, for the past 60 years if “Urban Renewal,” was about construction or destruction. If you actually need to, go ahead.
Lady in red (one of everyone)
Lady in red/Segundo barrio, El Paso-2008
Father Rahm Street. The Church is the backdrop. Backdrop for everything. Still, the heart of the Segundo barrio. This is a community that is a community where everything is there. No gates. No price tag. Fifty nine years after the Fair Housing Act of 1949 was enacted -the Urban Renewal Act- this barrio goes on, ethnically Latino, still a community, long after most American city’s inner cores have been cleansed of the “unworthy.”
A Valentine (in Texas)
Cracked window in Valentine, Texas-Jan. 9, 2009
There I am, tooling through the vast landscape of West Texas, working for an English language newspaper working out of Abu Dubai, Arab Emirates. Don’t ask. I’m not sure I understand the assignment. Something about Bush returning to Texas and illustrating what two brothers, who were doing a road trip, saw (except, according to my editor, they were really bad photographers). What that has to do with West Texas, I can’t figure.
Spin Balance landscape
Spin Balance Landscape, Chaparral, NM-August 2008
Space. Glorious space. Wonk yer brain but we all need more space. Maybe because we wonk our brains so much. This is from the funklands of southern New Mexico. It looks right across at the slim tip of West Texas that is El Paso. Juarez, Chihuahua is the horizon.
Space. This is the Tender Mercy of No Man’s Land.
Border Christmas: Grinchy but real!
Border Christmas: Grinchy but real!/El Paso-Dec. 24, 2008
Two way island
FBA#20-El Paso/Juarez-Dec. 2008
First block of America (FBA).
El Paso Street. La Frontera. I’d call it Texas but it ain’t. Everyone knows it if they’re from here. Texans hold their arms out, full length. Americans think it’s part of Mexico…or hell. New Mexicans…furgidaboutit! It’s all they have to really feel superior to.
El Paso, the nation-state of nowhere.
Tender mercy
LBI #7 Pano.series-Carlsbad, New Mexico/December2008
Been working on the Land Before the Interstate (LBI) series for a long time. Every chance I get to go there I grab. Time machine. No Interstate. No giant concrete suppository running right through your heart. The kinds of places Duvall would crash down in in Tender Mercies.
Angry princess/Princesa enojado
Angry princess/Princesa enojado, El Paso-October 31, 2008
El Paso, Oct. 31 (Halloween), 2008
Halloween on El Paso Street, the first (or last) block of America. Everyone is dressed and laying a festival veneer over the street. 5:30pm, people still rushing to the bridge to Juarez to get home (especially these days, trying to get home before dark, before the murders begin).
Cookie is one angry Chihuahua.
Ciego Musico/Blind Music
Calle Juarez, Ciego musico/Blind Music, Juarez – 1982
Juarez
This man played in the streets of Juarez for all my first years in La Frontera. He was blind. He was small. He made music like a special desert bird, joyful to bathe in just a drop of water, joyful to sing, even to the passing and witless American tourists.
Jefe de Sindicado
Sn. Delgadillo, Jefe de sindicado, Juarez- April 2006
Angel in the ‘hood
Segundo barrio, Armijo Park, El Paso /Sept. 2008
Young Jefe in Armjo
<ph4align=”center”>Carlos the young jefe, Armijo Park, El Paso / August 2008
Carlos is his name.
I don’t know…what…maybe 10 or 11?
No doubt, though, he is the leader of his pack.
Fancy shoes / Zapatas ricos
Fancy shoes, Juarez, 2008
Pipe In the valley
Pipe in the landscape, Mesilla Valley, Fall 2008
Border gas: two different worlds
Pemex station, Juarez, July 2008
Ciudad Acuna, Mexico
A Mexican border city has begun fining U.S. drivers who cross the border to fill extra drums, tanks or barrels with government-subsidized Mexican fuel.
The great divide: Juarez/El Paso
Border landscape #47, Juarez/El Paso – August 1, 2008
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.
Border fools and border delights: You gotta look hard
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?!
El Paso remnant: highway US80/”The Spanish Trail”
Remnant #41, Del Norte Courts, El Paso-July 22, 2008
Editor’s Note: For other images from the Remnant series, see the July 13, 2007 and the May 12, 2008 posts. Use the calendar in the right column.
El Paso and Russell Lee and the border (3 blocks)
© Russell Lee Photograph Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin
Swimming pool at Armijo Park, El Paso, Texas, 1949
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.
Gilbert and Pooch
Gilbert and Pooch, El Paso – July 12, 2008
Assume nothing.
I asked this man, in Espanol, if I could photograph him and his Chihuahua (part of a series I’ve been doing for a long time).
“I don’t speak Spanish,” he countered.
Why would I think he was Spanish-speaking?
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.
El Paso/Juarez view
El Paso/Juarez – July 10, 2008
El Paso: foreground.
Juarez: Background.
Words written in blood on old documents and rattling around in people’s heads who don’t live there.
Border story: Miguel, postman and mensch
Miguel, postman and mensch, El Paso – July 2008
Miguel.
Another border encounter.
He’s a savior for me on this day.
Barrio warrior for Jesus: El Paso
James Barraza, Segundo barrio, El Paso – June 30, 2008
James Barraza prowls the Segundo barrio with his Bible and attempts to spread “the good word.”
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
AIDS balloon at the border
AIDs balloon at the border, El Paso – June 27, 2008
Three women at a diet clinic: Juarez
