Music, The Street

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

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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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Photo of the Week

Don’t Entertain Me!

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 Segundo_Sodas_LoRes

 

El Tri Sodas 3X 1.00

Commentary by Border Blog Editor

El Paso Street in El Paso. It’s the first block of America. Or the last block of America. It depends on which direction you’re headed.

Going north it’s the first. Going south, it’s the last, the next block is Mexico.

This is a street of life, bulging with people, an array of goods from school and household supplies to clothes to audio stuff to high heels to T-shirts with everything from Revolutionaries  to cartoons on them. It’s juicy, alive and has texture and odor.

It’s  3D street.

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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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American Highway, New Mexico

Nuts

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Giant Pistachio, Alamogordo, New Mexico, Jan. 2013

CORRECTION:

Just got a very welcome announcement from a Border Blog viewer. He pointed out that the above image is a representation of a pistachio not a pecan.

Correct!

We don’t have much of a defense, but really, when this was posted on April  24, your Border Blog photographer, Bruce Berman, wasn’t much Bruce Berman either. That’s what happens when one “does what one has got to do as opposed to doing what you do.”

We at Border Blog are pleased to announce that the real Bruce Berman is back, on the border, three blocks from the bridge, in his decaying ruin, tape -metaphorically- over his mouth, no longer talking about photography but living his life, and making images that, hopefully, will do, as we wrote almost a decade ago, stating our intention to (see the “About” tab above),  “…cover the news, opinions and culture of the 2000 mile border of Mexico and the United States, concentrating on the epicenter of El Paso and Juarez. The Border Blog is not meant to be a news source as much as it is meant to be a news ‘feel’.”

Thank you MB and thank you Bruce (but tsk tsk on your caption!).

-The Editors

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

Centro Chicano Gone (In More Ways Than One)

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Doroteo in front of the ruins of Centro Chicano

2011 ©Bruce Berman

Centro Chicano gone. Rosas’ place gone (goodbye early 19th century, hello Denver to El Paso bus station). Flea market gone (it was so, “messy”). Museo Urbano, barely here and now gone. Koreans on S Street seem to be throwing in the towel, going. Can’t sell to Juarenses that aren’t there. The bi-national plan rising like a phoenix, unchanged and in better shape than it was (thank you Cartel War).

I know where “El Paso,” is right now. Bright New World. Shiny. All’s they need is a theme park and it’s on its way.

But Chicano El Paso, the turf south of Paisano, south side, El Segundo?

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border photography, el paso juarez border, Juarez, US/Mexico Border

Flowers And Music For Juárez

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Music and flowers, Juarez, 2012 –
©Bruce Berman

Commentary by Bruce Berman

There are many reasons for music and flowers in Juarez. Marriage, love, marking passages of accomplishment and age and transition. And death. Recently there has been little music and lots of flowers have been offered for goodbyes to loved ones, lost in the war. There are a lot of crossed fingers these days, lots of hope for better times, for the good. It’s been a long “winter” and it won’t go away right away. But there is still a Juarez in Juarez and the one we love is not gone. It had color and style and verve. It will again. There was the sweet smell of gardenias in the night air and thoughts of new possibilities and the violins played music of happiness in the skillful hands of roving mariachi. The Pop sounds of a new generation had begun to fill stadiums, singers emerged from as far away as DF and from within. Juarez was about style and boldness and defiance, a unique culture built over the past century, forged from a revolution and tempered by the shadow of a bossy and boasting neighbor. J town, Chihuahua. Strong, bold and pretty.

It’ll take a lot. A lot has happened.

It will be back. It is coming back (Estará de vuelta. Que se está recuperando).

It is, isn’t it? We hope.

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Industry, Love, US/Mexico Border

A Kiss For Asarco

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Man In Flames, ASARCO/El Paso – 1987

All photos ©Bruce Berman

 La Calavera-1986

A Dear John Letter to ASARCO
by Bruce Berman

Au revoir ASARCO. You were the spine of the border, a big giant dong sticking up out of the river, pouring flames and sulfur, lead and smoke. The town grew up around you, fed off of you, then outlived you. You looked down on battles and traffic, always with the bifocals of looking at two countries at once. Looking east to El Paso,  you looked down on the dusty foothills of the Franklins that became Kern Place and Mesa Hills, the sheik and elite (in its own mind). On the other, looking west, down into the dust and turbulence of Juarez, you looked down onto Colonia Felipe Angeles, which, too was foothills, that became a shanty town which became a barrio which became (shhhh..not quite yet) a path to a port of entry into New Mexico. What a vantage point you have had.  When I first saw you I stood up straight, saluted and said, Wow, yes sir!

I dug you from the gitgo, had the pleasure of working inside you, being constantly re-awakened by you, of working inside you near those flames with the weather outside 105 degrees, feeling the comradie of your workers, the satisfaction of being inside something that wild and crazy and productive, a caldron of energy and raw power.

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border photography, el paso juarez border, Juarez, Mental Illness, Mexico, Photo of the Week, US/Mexico Border

Lost And Looking For Redemption In The Mountains of Juarez

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Man#26, The Other Truth series, Juarez, May 2011

Christmas Eve/El Paso

A Personal Narrative

Lost and abandoned. Christmas Eve reminds me of that, right now, as I look out my south-facing window to Juarez (three blocks away) across the valley of Juarez, to the foothills of the Sierra Madre, where Creamac sits, CREAMAC, the “mental Institution” there, where the people huddle, people with trouble, trying to be warm, trying to make sense of the world, trying to live. CREAMAC, the House of the Abandoned and Troubled and Hurt.

I should be there. Today. Often. More often. I struggle with that. It’s snowing outside. Excuses to stay home, safe, just wrestling my own demons. I should cross the bridge (would my car get back over the ice on the bridge later tonight?), I should do SOMETHING!

Do I?

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border photography, Discussion of Documentary Photography, el paso juarez border, Humanity, illegal immigration, Immigration, Juarez, Mexico, Photo of the Week, US/Mexico Border

Crossing the Rio without Confusion

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Undocumented Women CrossingThe R2, Juraez-El Paso, 1984

Text and photograph by Bruce Berman

The river with two names: Rio Grande/Rio Bravo del Norte. Depends where you begin and where you end and where you return to. These women are heading north. It was a long time ago. Everything has changed and nothing has changed and I suspect it will continue to change and not change forever.

The river with two names, the R2, is also the place of the personality with two halves.

Confusing, no?

It is the place of bifurcation. But even that has two sides: twice as much insight.

Where are these women now? Which side happened to them? What happened to me? What happened to Juárez and the U.S.?

What happened to me?

I know this: people will cross going north no matter what and no matter the year. People will cross less, going south, depending on the year.

The river will flow south from Colorado (a Spanish name) to the Gulf of Mexico (an English language name).

And none of it matters to anyone living here except that one government makes it hard for another people to do what they have done for thousands of years and another government makes it necessary.

Who’s confused and who’s doing the confusing?

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border photography, Caló, Chicano, el paso juarez border, Humanity, Photo of the Week, Segundo barrio, US/Mexico Border

Man In The Segundo

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Man in the Segundo, El Paso – Sept. 2011

Photo and Text by Bruce Berman

Man from Anthony, New Mexico, describing his younger days in the Segundo barrio.

The Segundo barrio is El Paso’s most historic neighborhood, hugging the border with Juarez, Mexico and architecturally intact from the 1880’s “railroad boom,” that brought fired brick architecture and “Chicago Brick (which is atypical red).” Some adobe structures go back to the early 19th century. This part of the city has had human habitation for thousands of years. Spanish travelers began European settlement at this place in the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo in the mid 1600’s.

The real significance of the Segundo barrio, however, is the Latino community and it is significant. The barrio, historically, was the first “stop” on the journey north to “El Norte,” whether it was a matter of days for rest or for a generation of orientation. Many people in El Paso trace their roots to family who lived in El Segundo barrio in their first years in the United States.

FOR  CAFÉ TACUBA VIDEO (and the rest of this article):

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