On The Edge of the Edge – The U.S. – Mexico Border
“Gas for less.”
Less gas.
This is not a glitch, it is the changing of a culture.
Usually when a culture changes -sorry Barack- it is the result of a calamity: Depression, war, pandemic, natural disaster. Were it not so, but “change,” is not engineered. Eventually, it is managed.
Editor’s note:
This is an interview with Magnum photo greats, Elliott Erwitt and Burt Glin.These are the oldest current members of Magnum, the great photography cooperative founded, in 1947, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Robert “Chim” Seymour and George Rodger. For a certain kind of photography -our kind- this is a group of top notch shooters with really interesting work. If one needed to summarize the “vibe,” of Magnum, the word we would choose is, “Humanistic.” We’d define that as a passion for telling the truth -visually and emotionally- about humanity, all of it, with a predisposition to the idea that, as Anne Frank said, “I still believe…most people are good.” Magnum shows the full range, always entertainingly. These two photographers, are its heart and soul and treasure.
April 22, 2008
Magnum’s reputation is not just based on extraordinary photography. What distinguishes the members of the photoagency, which was founded in 1947, is character. The legendary Magnum photographers Elliott Erwitt and Burt Glinn talk about moments of opportunity, courage, independence – and humor. This interview was conducted by Pia Frankenberg in December 2006 and was first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in January 2007.
USA. New York. Dance School. 1977. The image is from part of a photo story about “upper class” children getting dancing lessons and being taught the “social graces”. © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos
Pia Frankenberg: Since when do you two know each other?
Burt Glinn: We first met in 1952 or ´53 I guess.
Elliott Erwitt: In the morning, I think.
There hasn’t been so much gunfire in Juarez since 1910. Since Jan.1, there have been over 230 drug war-related murders.
There was a time in Juarez -bourgeoise and ugly Americano, for sure, but what the hell- that it was just the old fashioned sins: getting drunk, dancing, straggling around with whatever “date,” that’d allow you to put your hands on her ( or whatever) and, if you survived, you crawled home over the bridge to El Paso and woke up late the next day.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: May 2-9, 2008
The Paso del Norte bridge between Juarez and El Paso. This is a bridge in hell.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 25-May2, 2008
The Silva family came to Juarez with the intention of crossing the border, into the U.S. and then traveling to the Midwest, where a family member had preceded them. They intended to work in agriculture in the wheat fields of Kansas. A dream. The American dream. It wasn’t to be their dream.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 18-25, 2008
Headphones Ninth Street and Oregon. The first street north of the border in El Paso, Texas. Jan. 31, 2008.
from The Americans
Robert Frank
b. 1924
“I am always looking outside, trying to look inside.”
This is da man! King of the road. He saw what everyone saw but he saw it through a 35mm camera and with a critical eye. To look at it now -the Global Village which used to be just America- needs a new eye. The question has been out there for awhile: What have we become?
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 11-18, 2008
Polaroid Corporation announced in early February that they no longer will make Polaroid instant cameras or film.
This announcement, world wide was greeted, mostly, by a collective shrug of the shoulders and a “ho-hum.”
For Juarez street photographers the news was immediately alarming, living-threatening, and was a call to action for a new learning curve to transition to digital photography.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 4-11, 2008
Juarez is in flames right now.
Drug war is raging. I’m calling it a drug war. It’s a lot of things war. Always is.
Spring has sprung in the desert. If only for a moment…time to play.
The mainstream of photography, from its inception, has been Documentary Photography, the straightforward act of visual description for distribution to an interested audience. Some would argue that its utility as a means of information has passed and that other media -video for example- serve that function in more effective ways.
Hog wash.
Still photography is the perfect abstraction of reality. It is based in reality, works best when trying to describe reality and becomes pure magic when used in the service of learning -usually beyond the control of the photographic practitioner.
Check out the new and updated Blogroll (right) and suck in the inspiration and knowledge that these documentary photographers provide. Nothing, for me, does information better than photography.
See and feel the work. That’s why it was created.
La Plaza/A Memoir
I went to the plaza today.
It was deserted.
Banks lend money to Americans to buy homes they can’t afford. The homeowners live in a dream bubble, the American Dream bubble. The lenders sell their paper and ride off into their millionaire dream. Everyone’s dreaming.
In Juarez they’re dreaming too.
Leap into the river with two names
Leap Day in the Leap Year 2008. Let’s all take a leap. Come on…why not!
This boy and his friends use the river with two names as a playground, a swimming pool, a back yard.
Why not.
It’s the little moments that work for me.
It’s an exquisite privilege to disappear. It doesn’t always happen. It’s really great -for the photographer- when it does. Photography out in the open, in other people’s realities, nobody even noticing.
Prounouns
Working on my series, “Lives Separated.”
Jesus come over the bridge from Juarez with this giant trophy.
“It’s the trophy we got for playing Juarez, we played Juarez football (soccer),” he says not saying who “we,” or,”they,” are.
Maria Monteros Rodriquez had been looking for her daughter Carmen for days. She had disappeared without a trace from their central Juarez home.
Notes from my Journal
Immigration. Swim, drive, and crawl. People do what they need to do and making them do any of the aforementioned things, put lives at risk.
The river is more than a highway of migration, though.
In the summers, when it’s hot, the river is a giant pool.
People play.
The river is polluted with chemicals from upstream pesticides from the farms, loaded with garbage and debris, has really tricky currents that, every summer, takes lives.
But people live in that river. That river is life for many in Juarez.
If the Jefes could see past their own little tight plans, this would be THE development that would be right for El Paso/Juarez: Play in the river.
Too simple, though, huh?
This girl is clinging to the El Paso side bank. ILLEGAL! La Migra comes and chases her away and she joyously splashes back to the Juarez side where her friends and family jeer and gesture at the Border patrolman. Everyone is having a good time. The Migra laughs, waves, knows he’s part of this great immigration farce, climbs back into his Suburban and drives off and the girl –and her friends- come back, swim to the U.S. side, pose for pictures, live the evening.
The sun sets. I go home. I played in the river, too.
One of the border Patrol’s favorite PR releases is about how their agents saved people from drowning. There’s one or two or three every year.
They never mention people caught playing. Before the fence.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Jan. 25-Feb. 1, 2008
You can leave the border but the border does not leave you. My head snapped when I saw Roberta Flores, up in New Mexico.
“Terrific hair,” I yelled at her. “Gelled,” I asked?
“No,” she said with a sly and proud smile, “Glued,” she shouted back, with a grin that sort of said, “gotcha!”
“Did you get that done around here? ” I asked.
“They don’t know how to do that around here,” she spat, friendly but gently ridiculing.
Still on mental vacation. What else do you do? Drool and look up. This is the border. Believe me the storm is coming in and not going out. As it always is. As it always was…
I’m a little weary of border politics, for now.
I return to the streets and hope the disorder of life gives me shape and form.
Politics and News seem to work on a linear arc.
Facts. Information. Plenty to tell. Endless detail and weight and nuance. Narrative is interesting but one of the things I’ve always liked about doing photography is the occasional punch in the gut you get from just being somewhere (often where you shouldn’t be).
Photography can work as a fact machine, but when it doesn’t and it’s just image, impression, reaction, light, when there is more than the sum of the parts, I like it the most.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Jan 4-11, 2008
Editor’s Note: To understand this week’s photo it might be useful to read the background of the story of the struggle of the people of Lomas del Poleo. Link number one is two years old, but is, I think, a fair history of this situation. The situation has gotten worse. Link number two is a video discussing the bi-national plight of people who are in the path of “development,” and are facing forced displacement. Another option is to google Lomas del Poleo.
Beware: Knowledge is trouble.
http://www.annunciationhouse.org/news_winter2005_dispute_en.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEqkytwHQ5s
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This was a sad day, one that has been coming for a long time. The confrontation at Granjas Lomas del Poleo, in Juarez is coming to the tipping point.
Los Cartoneros
In a desert, on the border, nothing much gets wasted.
Cartoneros, paper haulers, collect discarded and surplus paper and card board from border streets and from border merchants and haul it on their customized ” tricicletas.” They then sell it to scrap buyers, located about a mile from the border shopping district in the Segundo barrio.
El Paso’s El Centro, the downtown, is packed with people at Christmastime. Unlike most cities of the southwest and of the rest of the United States, El Paso’s downtown is alive and bustling at all times of year, but especially during this season.
Spring and summer of 2006.
“Revolution,” in the streets. Faux Revolution? Revolt. Spurt of protest? Quien sabe?
Remember? The immigration demonstrations and walk outs?
Waiting.
It’s hard to remember the last time I was waiting for something and not pressured to be thinking about the next stop, the next appointment.
Leisure?
Barely remember that…
Slow time? Time seems to be on steroids, going faster and faster.
So I came across this guy and time seemed stopped. He was waiting for the grieving and the return of the dead to his vehicle.
Flying tattoo on the window. That’s what I was after. Beautiful.
What I got was the Universal Salute?
Priceless.
He didn’t like me? No, I don’t get that. I do struggle with why I shoot on the streets. What right do I have, who appointed me? There’s some kind of thing I got into my head about documenting and witnessing and leaving the artifact that has driven me for a long time. So I do.
I like the fact that the tattoo-ero sends something back. He’s got a right. We all do what we’ve got do.
So, I get my tattoo in Juarez.
It’s not always peace and love out there.
So be it. ‘Ta bien.
Someone observed, generally, that in so-called third world countries, poor people have to live on top of hills and mountains (where it is more difficult to get water and where roads are rough and barely existent), but in first world countries the rich like to live on top of hills and mountains, for the “views.”
And the status.
