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.