Culture – Border Blog

1970s, Chicago, Culture

POLISH GYM SHOES 1971

July 16, 2023 No Comments

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?

American Highway, Culture, Humanity

GHOST

May 19, 2023 No Comments

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.

border photography, Culture, el paso juarez border

REPEAT

October 29, 2022 No Comments

Cars, Chicago, Culture

EDDIE’S CAR

April 24, 2022 No Comments

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.

border photography, Culture, El Paso-Juárez

RED BUS

April 12, 2022 No Comments

The Red Bus, Paso del Norte International Bridge, El Paso/Juárez, 1989

Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman

The Old Red Bus ran back and forth over the Juárez International bridge for decades. The bus itself was from the late 1950s, a GM. First photo I ever took when I got to El Paso and started wandering around was of the Red Bus, on El Paso Street. I noticed the women, from 18 to late 40s, lined up. I came to know that they were “maids,” low wage women from Juárez that came over every day and served the Anglos of a neighborhood north of downtown. It was called Kern Place. At the end of the day -those that worked by the day and not the week- would walk south down the hill to “EL Centro,” get on the bus and go home, to Juárez
Generations of Anglo kids were raised by these “maids.” Tons of dishes were washed. Beds were made. Laundry was done. They watched the American culture and went home. Key word: Home. Theirs. Another world.
I shot that old photo in October 1975.

chihuahua, Culture, Juarez

JUAREZ LOVE

August 1, 2021 No Comments

Juárez, Tarahumara mama and kids, 2012

In the middle of the Cartel War, the Tarahumaras from the Sierra Mountains of northwest Chihuahua, México, still work the streets of Juárez, selling goods, doing services, and attempting to not blend into the fabric of the 3rd largest city in México, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
The Tarahumara Indians (self-named Rarámuri), are a tribe that inhabit the northwest of the State of Chihuahua in México.
Economic conditions through the late 20th century and early 21st, have forced a large part of the tribe to seek economic stability in the nearest major city, Juárez, México.
The Rarámuri try to retain their cultural identity in dress and custom, an uphill task in the sprawling northern city of Juárez.
For more on the Rarámuri see https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tarahumara

Art, border photography, Chicano, Culture, el paso, Gentrification, Mental Illness, Plaza, US/Mexico Border

The Plaza of Stooges

July 30, 2015 1 Comment

El Paso’s Central Plaza, is officially named San Jacinto Plaza. It is located in the middle of El Paso’s original business district and about 3/4 of a mile from the border with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In recent times its unofficially been called Plaza de los Lagartos which refers to the old pool in the middle of the plaza that used to be the home of alligators (lagartos in español) which no longer existed after the early 1970s. The alligators were later commemorated, in 2006, by a fiberglass sculpture of alligators by native son and internationally renowned artist, Luis Jimenez.

America, Culture, Discussion of Documentary Photography, Journalism, Photo of the Week, Photography Tip, Street Photography

FRANK OSCAR LARSEN: STREET PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE 1950s

July 18, 2015 No Comments

America, American Highway, Capitalism, Culture, Economics

MAD MEN: END OF THE INNOCENCE

May 6, 2015 No Comments

Mad Men, the 50s and the Waiting

Text and photograph by Bruce Berman

Mad as in nutty mad…mad because they were delirious with the defiance of convention while simultaneously becoming the masters of the Establishment (and remain so, truly understanding what motivates consumers -and that became all of us- and then getting them to consume), mad because they were about to be jetting and tail-finning and mini-skirting and drinking and potting and pushing every moral convention ever taught and/or learned out the back door into what became the waste dump of the 60s. They were insane with the possibilities and not burdened by the weight of the previous two generations (The Great One of the Depression and the War). They were mad and intoxicated and wild, like their cars, huge, with unlimited horsepower, design that was plastic and chrome and sweeping, made with materials never heard of before. Theory knew no limits. Everyone felt a little “illegal,” yet, invited to the table. Being ecclectic was safe. Just keep consuming, it’ll all be all right. Yes, they were nutty mad and flew high, never thinking there could be a landing, mad with the waiting for the coming fall, the doubt, the emptiness, the great Genericide, ergo, The End Of The Innocence (Don Henley). They became us. Post Mad. The masters of data, overthink, and, compliance.