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Distractions de Juarez
Distraction de Juarez, Juarez, Mexico – April 2009
Violence? What violence?
Wha-a-a-a…we need distractions?
Si. Si se hace (I am scolding myself right now!).
Dummy Babe (the real deal)
Alien Babe in El Paso – May 2009
Sometimes it’s more fun to interact with dummies than it is people.
TEA Man
TEA Protest, El Paso, Texas – April 15, 2009
This man was photographed in El Paso, Texas at a “TEA party.” At the TEA party are, mostly, the aged and, seemingly, the innocent, with much esoteric political discussion, predictions of the end of the Republic, impassioned anger and, to be fair, much sincerity. To my “”eye,” it seems a little sad. Sadness for what, I am still trying to process and determine.
Star No More
Star No More, Marfa, Texas – March 2009
The West, the American Highway (and the American fascination with it), Funk, ain’t what it used to be.
Fine with me!
Ruin In Motion
No Futbol War
“Maleno,” Juarez – March 2009
Juarez, March 13, 2009/ Estado Benito Juarez, Juarez, Chihuahua/Mexico
The Juarez Indios are a professional futbol team(soccer). They are in the middle of the Cartel Drug War. Much of the city of Juarez has rallied around the Indios, finding some “normalacy,” in the middle of the troubled Juarez violencia. Julio Daniel “Maleno” Frias is a star of the team, a “striker,” a troubled city’s hero. The city loves him, he’s a hero in the middle of bad news caused by rats. When “Maleno,” was younger he joined a gang. He got shot. He decided to change his life and he did. Maybe this is why the city fell in love with him, he’s a living metaphor for a city’s hopes. Maybe they just like the way he plays: smooth, quiet and intense.
Some players have left the team and others have sent their families back to the cities they came from (some in Mexico, one in Argentina), trying to avoid the touch of violence that has afflicted Juarez, Mexico’s third largest city.
The team is struggling to stay in the top tier of Mexico’s professional soccer league.
Attendance is sold out.
Futbol is trumping the war.
So far.
Life goes on.
Juarez Will Not End
Otra Linea in Juarez, March 2009
You start to wonder if it’ll ever end but it will end.
La violencia. The violence.
Alameda Street Showboat: Blast From The Past
Alameda Street Showboat, El Paso-1987
Alameda Street is about (what’s this “about,” stuff?) to get stomped. Progress. New Hospital and Medical School down the Street. Progress.
‘ta bien, really. Time to move on. One thing about Urban Renewal and Plans: we have had the best of it and now you can have the rest. The next “blight,” that I move to -older and wiser now- there will be no Forwarding Address.
La Migra Mirando
Jesus In The ‘Hood
Jesus in the ‘hood, Armijo park, El Paso-2009
Jesus is greeting me. Or showing off his gang signage. Or just jivin’. Behind him, three blocks to the south, is Juarez. Armijo Park, deep in the Segundo barrio of El Paso is Jesus’ refuge.
Mine too.
JUAREZ IN SMOKE
Lomas del Poleo revisited
Protest for Lomas del Poleo, El Paso-Jan. 2008
It was only a year ago that the plight of the people of Lomas del Poleo was the highest priority of cross border activist politics. The people were systematically being robbed of their land, their court actions were, basically, being stonewalled, the injustice of the top to the bottom was blatant and a coalition of forces stepped up and, on this day did, a bi-national protest at the Mexican Counsulate in El Paso and the Mexican Counsulate in Jaurez.
That seems like long ago.
The sword of Juarez
The sword of Juarez-November 2008
There’s a sword hanging over Juarez. The sword of Juarez. Murder. 1500, this year and we have a month to go. A drug war? A crazy’s war. Get it over with. Somebody win the war for turf, already. Nobody cares. Get it over with, one side win, one side lose, then send your drug shit to the gringos and let the people go free, let them come out of their houses at night, let the undertakers worry about their bills, again. Somebody win, already, because nobody is winning at all.
The great divide: Juarez/El Paso
Border landscape #47, Juarez/El Paso – August 1, 2008
El Paso remnant: highway US80/”The Spanish Trail”
Remnant #41, Del Norte Courts, El Paso-July 22, 2008
Editor’s Note: For other images from the Remnant series, see the July 13, 2007 and the May 12, 2008 posts. Use the calendar in the right column.
El Paso/Juarez view
El Paso/Juarez – July 10, 2008
El Paso: foreground.
Juarez: Background.
Words written in blood on old documents and rattling around in people’s heads who don’t live there.
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.
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.
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.
El Patron de Las calles: Robert Frank
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?
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.
Bull Boy
Retratos de la Corrida, Bull boy, Juarez – 2002
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.
Waiting For Antonia’s Release
PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Jan 4-11, 2008
Waiting outside the police station jail
for Antonio’s release, Juarez, Jan. 4, 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
____________________________________________________________________________
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.
Homeless Happy Birthday
Homeless Happy Birthday, El Paso, October 19, 2007
Regino Olivas-Mendoza, 47, hangs around a car wash in central El Paso. He wears a sign that says, “Homeless today, Is my birthday, can you help me?”
Thoughts On Time
Women and the Red Bus -Oct. 1975
October 5, 2007
A funny thing about photography and time: it can capture milliseconds and it can capture decades, and all in the same photograph.
Panteon Nuevo de Juarez
28-October 5, 2007
El Panteon nuevo, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico – 1988
The cemetery came before the barrio. An ultimate act of realism.
The FBA
Black Cross on the FBA, August 2007
Summer on the FBA. Hot. 100.
This is Father Rahm Street, which is, actually, Fifth Street. Around the corner is El Paso Street which is the first block of America (or the last, depending on where you’re coming from).
Around the corner, to the south is where the Paso del Norte bridge from Juarez empties out. There are stories on this street, big life-journeys begin here. This is where dreams begin. Some people have called this the “Ellis Island of South America.” Maybe that’s the draw for me (my Father was born on that other immigration island in 1907). That was another dream. These are places where dreams can start.
The Black Cross mural for the violence against women in Juarez appeared a couple of years ago. Then they put a bus stop in front of it (dumb). Then they took the bus stop out but painted over the text (also dumb) about the violence to the women.
Whatever. Life passes and passes strongly. This is where I have spent a lot of my life.
Nothing stops the energy on the FBA. People are looking for their place, their direction, their dream. I’m looking. I’m there almost every afternoon.
Dignified Man #12
Dignified Man #12
Cool Norteno, Plaza de Juarez – Juarez, Mexico / June 2007
The Plaza de Juarez in Juarez, Mexico is an ancient crossroads. The plaza stands in front of the Mision de Guadalupe, a church established in 1659 along the El Camino Real. The plaza today is still a crossroads and a transportation hub and, on Sundays, is vibrant, eclectic and fully the heart of the old Centro Juarez. Much of the area north of the Centro, the Plaza, and the Mision, the area between the old Juarez commercial district stretching north all the way to the U.S. border and El Paso, is currently, being demolished. The demolition is clearing the way for a commercial development that is projected to link up with El Paso’s south side and Downtown, also scheduled for demolition, just across the river to the north.
The transportation hub that has made the Plaza de Juarez the intense and interesting center of Juarez that it is, is scheduled to be relocated away from its current location.
The “Cool Norteno,” garbed in standard norteno clothes, and others, may or may not survive the “development.”
Juarez: Still Not The USA (Gracias a Dios)!
fotografo-centro Juarez-Retrato: $ 4.50(US)
Musicos de Juarez-March 23, 2007
Musico de Juarez-March 23, 2007
Peace Is Going To The Dogs (But Who’s Laughing)
