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Border gas: two different worlds
Pemex station, Juarez, July 2008
Ciudad Acuna, Mexico
A Mexican border city has begun fining U.S. drivers who cross the border to fill extra drums, tanks or barrels with government-subsidized Mexican fuel.
Mist and mirrors: facts and fictions
Mist and mirrors d’town, El Paso – 6:38:51pm/July 28, 2008
I am supposed to be packing right now. I have a job in another city. It starts in three weeks. I won’t be leaving. This corner, this light, these people, their shadows, have inveighed my life for an adulthood…a long time.
Gilbert and Pooch
Gilbert and Pooch, El Paso – July 12, 2008
Assume nothing.
I asked this man, in Espanol, if I could photograph him and his Chihuahua (part of a series I’ve been doing for a long time).
“I don’t speak Spanish,” he countered.
Why would I think he was Spanish-speaking?
Juarez murders: it’s complicated
Protesting policeman, Juarez -March 2008
photograph by Julian Cardona
Photo and story by Julian Cardona
March 31, 2008
About 50 Juárez police officers protested what they consider the arbitrary arrests of fellow officers by the recently arrived Mexican army in ciudad Juarez. They were protesting the alleged framing of numerous officers on charges of drug possession.
Immigration abuse never ends. Jacob Riis: Concerned Photographer
“Slept In That Cellar Four Years,” 1890-92
“Slept in the cellar (of a Ludlow Street tenement)
where the water was ankle deep on the mud floor”
View more work -and hear an excellent NPR audio clip- by the great Danish-American documentary photojournalist. He was one of the first to use “flash,” (first introduced in Germany in 1887). Riis cast the mold for what a “Concerned Photographer,” is, and launched a century of relevant, motivating and society-changing “witnessing.”
Editor’s Note:
For more images and audio clip: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91981589
AIDS balloon at the border
AIDs balloon at the border, El Paso – June 27, 2008
Ayudanos (todos de nosotros)
Ayudanos/Help us, El Paso – 2008
Roof Cam: Borderlands Suite
Roof Cam #8, El Paso – June 2008
I’m driving around my city. I’m moving my operation a little to the north of where I am now, north of the border, north of the borderline, north of my reality. I’m already feeling separation depression. So I drive around my turf of 30 years. I don’t have to look anymore, I know the bricks, the cracks, the fault lines. I’ve shot them a million times and re-shot them. I stick the camera out the sunroof and let the car become part of the camera. The car is the camera. and I tour my myth. This is between me and it, not meant for others. All of my work is getting there now, it’s between me and it.
$ 39.99 Border
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: June 17-????, 2008
View of el poniente, Juarez, June 2008
World has gone crazy.
Murder and hell in this landscape.
Stop taking your drugs you busted up stinkin’ American pricks!
Man who crossed the river
PHOTO OF THE WEEK (#2): May 16-23, 2008
Man who jumped the river,
waving at his friends in Juarez (in triumph),
standing on US side/ El Paso-Juarez, 1990’s
Moving day ( a bad pun)
PHOTO OF THE WEEK (#1): May 16-23, 2008
Moving the man, Uptown (upper Broadway Street), Chicago, 1969
I have moving on my mind. I don’t do it often. When I do it is a reincarnation for the better or worse. I am about to do it. In so doing, I came up with this image from the boyhood of my life as a photographer. One of the very first. I still like the street puns.
Dreamland USA (se fue)
Remnant #37, Less gas/Alameda Street, El Paso, Texas – May 12, 2008
“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.
Interview with two Magnum greats
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.
Juarez: Music and bullets in the air
Juarez harps(?), May 2008
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.
The bridge that divides
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: May 2-9, 2008
The bridge that divides, El Paso to Juarez, Jan. 2008
The Paso del Norte bridge between Juarez and El Paso. This is a bridge in hell.
Stuck in Juarez: Time warp (siempre es lo mismo)
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 25-May2, 2008
Stuck in Juarez, colonia Avicola-1989
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.
Headphones
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 18-25, 2008
Headphones, segundo barrio / El Paso – Jan. 31, 2008
Headphones Ninth Street and Oregon. The first street north of the border in El Paso, Texas. Jan. 31, 2008.
Polaroid no mas. Fotografos estan proxima!
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 11-18, 2008
Polaroid no mas/Polaroid no more, Juarez – 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.
Woman at protest
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: April 4-11, 2008
Distressed woman at protest at Lomas del Poleo, Juarez-2007
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.
Primavera in the borderlands
White Sands National Monument, NM – March 20, 2008
Spring has sprung in the desert. If only for a moment…time to play.
Check the updated Blogroll/Photolinks. Great new sites!
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.
BOY IN THE PLAZA
Boy in La Plaza de los Lagartos, El Paso-1976
La Plaza/A Memoir
I went to the plaza today.
It was deserted.
Happy Halloween
Woman in Juarez Maquila plant / Juarez, Chihuahua
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 #7
Leaping into the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, El Paso-Juarez
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.
Two Girls en la Colonia
Two girls getting ready for school in Colonia Avicola, Juarez-2007
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.
Jesus With Trophy
Jesus at the bridge, Feb 11, 2008-El Paso
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.
Disappeared Mute Girl
Disappeared mute girl returns home, Juarez, 2001
Maria Monteros Rodriquez had been looking for her daughter Carmen for days. She had disappeared without a trace from their central Juarez home.
Play: Before The Fence
Before the fence, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, El Paso-Juarez – 1989
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.
Roberta’s Glued Head
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Jan. 25-Feb. 1, 2008
Roberta’s glued head (Head #14), Las Cruces, NM, Jan. 18, 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.
Light Storm
Light and storm, downtown El Paso, Jan. 15, 2008
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…