border photography, el paso, Street Photography

1st OF THE 3rd

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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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border photography, el paso juarez border, Humanity, Mexico, Street Photography, US/Mexico Border

UNDEFINED PERSONALITIES AND THE BRIDGE

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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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el paso juarez border, Juarez, Street Photography, The Street, US/Mexico Border

Unhappy Crowd With Tarot Cards

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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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chihuahua, el paso juarez border, Humanity, Street Photography, Texas, The Street, US/Mexico Border

The Shocking Man

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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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border photography, chihuahua, el paso juarez border, Juarez, Mexico, Street Photography, The Street, US/Mexico Border

El Toro bi-plane, Juárez

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El Toro bi-plane on La Avenida, Juárez, 2008

Streets of Juárez are changing.

The murderous last few years are being replaced with growth. Planned growth.

The entire border is under development and there have been plans for decades that are now starting to happen.

It’s as if the violencia was a cleansing. Or was it a scrubbing?

In the “new” Juárez there won’t be any Bi planes. The era is gone. Anything from the 20th Century will become increasingly a rarity.

So be it. C’est la vie. Es la vida. What can one say?

Or was it a

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border photography, Chicano, el paso, el paso juarez border, Photo of the Week, Segundo barrio, Street Photography, Texas, US/Mexico Border

The Fast Disappearing Authentic Segundo Barrio: Mailbox Kids

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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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Darkroom, Nicaragua, Street Photography

Street Photographer In Nicaragua

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Developing a portrait, Granada, Nicaragua, February 1986

This photographer in the Plaza of Granada in Nicaragua is developing a portrait that he just made. Inside the box are the normal developing chemicals of Developer, Fixer. Once he has the photograph captured -on portrait size paper- he goes inside the camera through the light tight sleeve and goes from one mini tray to the next until he has the image “fixed.” He then pulls the photograph out and washes it on a tray of water that he has set up in a little bucket attached to the tripod under the camera.

His process was not as fast as the 60 second time for a Polaroid, but, close!

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