Juarez Through The Fence
Garry Winogrand And Milliseconds Of The Oblique
Garry Winogrand. Off kilter. Off beat. And right on in capturing the milliseconds of the oblique.
Watch this video and think about Garry lassoing the non-monumental. He was a wild puppy and full of life. Just enjoy the fun.
A memoir: Meeting Garry Winogrand
by Bruce Berman
Garry was a photographer and a winner of prizes: three Guggenheim Fellowship Awards (1964, 1969, and 1979) and a National Endowment of the Arts Award in 1979. He was a street guy and he was, most of all, a New Yorker. His photos reek “NYC.” He was hugely famous and revered in the 1970s and 80s.
Go Japan: Life Goes On
The Tragedy
Keita before the rain
Japan –One takes one’s blows. Japan, oil-less for so long, bitten by the need for energy for so long, powered by spirit, hard work and, now, uranium, has received a blow. A blow is either fatal or forgettable.
We will see.
I receive a message from my old student, in Osaka. He is going to have an exhibition in September (and begin his studies in photography anew). Yeah! Forward. The horizon. Onward. His show will be work that he began in my documentary class: Smokers. Pure defiance! So cool.
What do you die from first: smoking, radiation or loss of defiance?
Go Keita! Go Japan! Live your future. It’s good .
Life goes on.
In Outside
Inside Out by JR
Editor’s Note: This is an amazing project. In the era when people worry about the demise and/or future of journalism, when academics question the effectiveness of journalism in a 24/7 news cycle world, there is JR, who is producing and promoting another form of photojournalism and not only bringing his subjects into the communication process, he is bringing the work done on the subjects back to their environments. Check it out:
About JR the artist:
INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.
See the video:
New Mexico Car With Issues
New Mexico Car With Issues, Las Cruces, Feb. 2011
Las Cruces –Anything else? There’s still space.
The Great Border Storm of 2011: El Paso – Juarez
The Great Border Storm of 2011, El Paso-Juarez
by Bruce Berman ©2011
EL PASO –It was an amazing storm. Hard to believe it happened. Zero temperatures (in El Paso!!!!). Ice. Snow. Irregular electricity. No internet. Intermittent Gas (for some people). Highways closed. Jobs (including mine. I haven’t been to NMSU since last Tuesday! Bummer! I like it) canceled. Everything closed. Voluntary curfew (requested). Went on for three to five days (depending on which part of this freaky happening we’re talking about, and, when it was all over, yesterday, it wasn’t over because there were major outages of water (I’m going to get that shower eventually…like today!).
Now I think it’ll be El Paso again and we’ll be in shorts T Shirts and swamp coolers, squishy asphalt, hoods up and steaming radiators and complaining about the heat in no time at all.
Like I said, it was like a dream and hard to believe it ever happened.
La Barricada a Los Dos Anapra(s)
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Protest For Peace at the Anapra, New Mexico/Anapra, Chiahuaha border, Jan. 29.
by Bruce Berman ©2011
Artist, Marine, Steelworker, Truckdriver, Hip Guy
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©2010 Bruce Berman
EL PASO — Grave is a Renaissance man. He prowls the city spraying paint, rapping with passerby (me included), dreaming of new projects, checking out vacant walls that he or his kids can awaken, always lining up the next stuff, sharing philosophy, Being.
Dos Osos Goofin’
Time For Something Fine (what the hell!)
Estimados Fotógrafos Del Mundo #3
Chasing After Something Bad
Tearing through the streets of Juarez chasing the latest shooting, by Bruce Berman
The Most Dangerous Beat: Juárez, Mexico
An important piece on the journalists of Juarez by Brent and Craig Renaud/New York Times
“Reporters in Juárez not only cover drug cartel violence but are often targets themselves.”
Juárez: Room For Everybody?
People, Horse, Van in Juarez by Bruce Berman ©2010
JUAREZ, Mexico – Juarez still stands. It is still Juarez. It is a city of my heart. I am not alone. It is insane what has happened in Juarez. There is no reference or metaphor: it just stinks. I walk the streets and there are “tastes,” of the old city. The “new city,” the one of Malls and chrome and green eco-glass, the nightclubs and shiny new cars has disappeared more than the old city has.
This might say something about what the condition of the city was before “The Troubles.”
Angelica Looks Up
Angelica, Segundo barrio, El Paso – Oct. 18, 2010
EL PASO –Angelica Alvarez. A true believer. A believer in her faith. A believer in a better day. A believer in joy.
I noticed her as she worked her way down the street, engaging every person that she encountered, leaving each person she talked with a smile on their face, enthusiastically waving goodbye to her, they no longer strangers.
I followed her.
Cruz Negra: The Light In Juarez II
The Light in Juárez
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Is there any Light at the end of Juárez’s tunnel?
There are a lot of things in Juárez these days: widows, widowers, killers, thugs, riddled bodies, drug addicts, every day normal people, kids going to school, people being married, bombs and death across the street (almost) from the old “City Market.” Everything.
There is very little Light.
The city seems to have turned from sunny and bright and colorful to Black and White, like an old photograph, one that wasn’t “fixed,” very well and is losing it’s contrast and fading away. The brightness is gone. Light is at a premium, right now, for sure, in Juárez.
Letter to my friend: I’m On My Way Martin
Martin, man of dignity and courage, Lomas del Poleo, Summer 2009
Dear Martin,
I said I would be back to Lomas and I haven’t been back in a year now. It’s crazy. I drive to work in Las Cruces three times a week and I look to the west and I can see you, I can see Lomas, right there, the flat top mesa poking out from behind Cristo Rey.
No, I haven’t been back. I am sorry. Life caught up with me and I had to do my labors, take care of biz, run around like a chicken without a head. And, in the meantime, I have fallen in love with a photo project, far away from here, up in Nuevo Mexico, and I have given it a lot of my attention.
All weak excuses.
I said I’d be back and continue the work we began and I haven’t.
You -and sus vecinos, sus compañeros in Lomas del Poleo- are never out of my thoughts.
Announcer
Salvador Valentino, Ring Announcer
El Paso, Texas – May 23, 2010
Sequesterer(alleged) Sequestered
la acusación (perp walk) en Juárez, May 15, 2010
Iasi Emanuel Rodriquez Gamez , aka “El Enano (the dwarf),” 22, is led down a hallway, by a member of the Federal Police at the Ministry of Justice (Procuraduria de Justicia del Estado) in Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
He is accused of being the leader of a kidnapping gang that kidnapped at least 19 people. Authorities alleged Rodriguez, 22, took orders from suspected kidnappers Ernesto “El Neto” Piñon de la Cruz and Jesus Eduardo “El
Lalo” Soto Rodriguez. This group is accused of committing 39 kidnappings since December 2008. The “El Lalo y de Neto,” gang has operated in Juarez over the past three years.
“El Paseo” (With Death in the Shadows)
Town plaza, Zaragoza, Chihuahua-05/08/2010
Sunny normal day.
In Zaragoza/Juárez?
Impossible!
I couldn’t work it in -excuses!- but beyond the Tarahamara woman and her brood, in the deep darkness of the trees, protected by yellow police tape and the Policia Federal -who shooed me away- lies a dead woman in her twenties.
Cause of death? Bullet wound.
Reason for death? Unknown.
Plaza Zaragoza. Gateway to the east valley of Juarez, the new turf of the Cartel who have all but emptied the towns there, clearing them like you’d clear a loading dock, which is what the Cartel has done.
Anything in the way is burned or buried.
Maybe this woman was in the way.
Fire in Juárez
Half Dead City Is Fully Alive
Zaragoza (Juarez), Chihuahua, street kids at scene of a murdered woman, 05/08
©Bruce Berman 2010
Two border towns.
El Paso and Juarez.
One city is half dead and the other is in a coma. Guess which is which?
As always, a trip to Juarez puts everything in perspective and raises big questions. For openers: We don’t have to do all the things we think we need to do, there are worse things than physical death and injury, watch out for what you hear, and, we should never believe anything except what our eyes feel.
My eyes tell me Ciudad Juárez is alive.
I salute you, injured Madame Juárez.
FOR SLIDESHOW, GO TO NEXT PAGE:
At least 6 police and one sicario killed in Juarez
Dead Police and Murderer in Juarez by heroic
by anonymous El Diario de Juarez photographer
Today in Juarez. More of the same. If this were anywhere else we’d be sending aide and 120,000 troops. Instead we send DEA Agents (under the terms of the “Merida Initiative”) and clandestine military “trainers,” to train soldiers and police…to do what, exactly?
The last time I heard the term “trainers,” it was the early and mid sixties and the trainers were being sent to Viet Nam.
How’d that work out for us?
More importantly, how’d that work out for Viet Nam?
Watch out Mexico, there are many many dollars seeking calamities. Buy cheap, wait, sell strong.
Anyway, six Federales and one murderer (sicario), today, so far.
Same old…
Joy in the Gym (Sacred)
Joy#2, Segundo Barrio, Sagrado Corazon gym – El Paso
Sagrado Corazon gym. Sunday dance.
Kick it.
Kick it hombre!
Golpelo, vato viejo (no muy)!
Joy always seems to be somewhere near this gym. The ‘hood is really tattered now. Anything near the border is tattered or about to be.
But ya gotta dance, yeah?
Ken Van Sickle!
all photographs ©Ken Van Sickle
Every once in awhile, when you’re not looking, and something new comes to you and you go, “There’s More!”
This morning, in my meanderings, I came across this quote:
“A person often meets their destiny on the road he took to avoid it.*”
The quote led me -in that totally weird way that “surfing,” around the web sometimes does- to a photographer I have never even heard of, before, let alone, known.
And his pictures are Fabulous!
Border Beauties
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February 13, 2010, the day before the Day of San Valentin – El Paso, Texas
Photographs by Bruce Berman
Pipo’s Hair Salon and School held a beauty competition and the best of the best turned out to coif, spray, paint and shape the “models,” in a competition that determined who was the most beautiful and who was the best beauty maker.
The night’s Dj, a veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq was overheard telling the photographer (me), “I’ve seen a lot of things but I have never ever seen anything like this.
Not even in Iraq.
The border always has a twist. But this event, at least to your correspondent, seemed to make sense.
In journalism, they always teach you to ask, “Why?”
I guess the question here is, Why Not?
El Paso Dreamin’
Town for sale, El Paso – Feb. 2010
From the movie The Border:
Marcy (Valerie Perrine) : (Showing her Border Patrol husband brochures about El Paso, trying to talk him into moving there, at their breakfast table, in Los Angeles) Honey sometimes you gotta dream.
Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson) : (Pausing, furrowing his now signature brow) I never dreamed no El Paso.
Myths, Ghosts, And, This Window
Ghost View south, Dec. 19, 2009
Three of the last four posts have involved this window. The view to the south. One block to Alameda Street, two more down Stevens and, voila, you’re at the bridge, then you’re in Juarez, then if you keep going you’re on the carretera to Ciudad Chihuahua, then Torreon, then Puebla and Mexico and then… well who knows where this ends?
This is the last one of this window for awhile. I’ve been clinging to it. Home. I’ve been shooting from this window and the roof right out my back door for decades. The view hasn’t changed that much.
I have.
A Warm Farewell
A piece written to my photography students at the end of a fine semester at New Mexico State University. Forgive the “first person.” Originally posted on their class website at www.nmsu.documentaryshooters.com:
Brucini w/New Blanket from a Good Friend, El Paso –Dec. 9, 2009
So it comes to this, the semester ends, we go our own way, we know more for having known each other.
We have had our ambitions and we have had our disappointments but, what we mostly have had, I think, is a journey of discovery.
At least, it’s has been that way for me.
I was given something wonderful today: a very warm blanket from a very good and thoughtful friend (she had heard that my Loft is frigid in the winters, a concrete old factory building of a palace, not designed to be lived in).
I stopped on the way home for some Christmas lights. First time in my life I have bought any. How can one not succumb to this Season when such kind gestures are extended?