POLISH GYM SHOES, 1971

Smoking Man, diner at State and Ohio Streets, Chicago, 1971

Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman

This was the very beginning of my career, when I first realized what I wanted to be … a photographer. Not much has changed since then. This is exactly the kind of photograph I like to make, the kind of experience I like to have. Me on the prowl, encountering a person on the fringe, direct eye contact. The only thing I do now that I did not do then is to get more info about a person, really get to know them. At that time, and for many many years afterwards, I was just satisfied with getting the photograph. As time has gone on I now realize that that is incomplete. It’s the photograph and the text that matter, so that the person photographed is honored, not just used. Maybe that reflects aging, learning the world is not all about me but about me being in the world, about respect for others, maybe just about being a real documentary photographer.
So, here I am, 42 years later and I don’t know who he is, where he was from, what the name of the diner was, what he did for a living, exactly when the date was, etc., i.e., the 5Ws that any journalist knows are essential.
A detail I never noticed before, is his shoes. Believe it or not they are meaningful to me. In my old south side neighborhood, these are the kind of shoes we’d buy every few years. They were our main shoes (except for dress shoes). This man’s are the primos, the better ones, because they have finished leather. Ours were the exact same 10 lace model but a cheaper brand, and the leather on those was called “rough out.”
Why am I talking about shoes?

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PUNCHOUT KIDS

Punchout Kids, North side, Chicago, 1970, ©Bruce Berman

Text and Photo by Bruce Berman

Never too young, I guess.
We had ONE pair of gloves when I was a kid. I got the left-handed one and my day had the other.
He had a robust punch.
Ironically, his name was Punch.
LOL!

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PINHOLE #1-CHICAGO 1971

This is the first Pinhole I ever made in summer 1971.
After three yeqars of shooting editorial work, riots, demonstrations, poverty and pissed off people, I needed to stop. I packed my Canon cameras up and was wondering what to do. Eventually, I stumbled upon a small book at a bookstore called The Hole Thing by Jim Schull.
I made the first camera with an old GE light bulb box, tinfoil and a #12 sewing needle and cut up a sheet of Kodak G #2 printing paper.
This is the first one.
No matter how far or wide I have gone for the past 52 years, I always return to Pinhole, which always reminds of how simple and yet unbelievably miraculous is the photographic process. And, how fun it is. And it reminds me not to forget the magic of the “hole thing.”

Montana Street rear window, Chicago, 1971 by Bruce Berman

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JIMMY COTTON WAILING

 


Jimmy Cotton on the harp, Wise Fool’s Pub, Chicago, 1969 by ©Bruce Berman

 

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPH BY Bruce Berman, Editor

Photograph from the upcoming book, ChiTown Journal (Border Blog Press) by Bruce Berman.
Jimmy Cotton was a legendary Blues player in the Chicago tradition. He was from the Mississippi Delta and was discovered and promoted by the great Muddy Waters (also from the Delta). The Wise Fool’s pub was a mainstay Northside pub on Lincoln Avenue (across the street from another main blues bar, the Oxford Pub).
This photograph was made on the last set of a three set night (at 2:30am, April 18, 1969.
I gave Mr. Cotton a print copy of this image in the mid 2000s at a concert venue in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
He smiled, said he liked it, then added in one sentence,  “Ouuu…That was such a young man.”

More on Mr. Cotton: https://bit.ly/2lWNFkI

VIDEO: Dealing With The Devil Jimmy Cotton https://youtu.be/MXtldRJxj5c

 

 

 

 

 

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ART SHAY: IN YOUR FACE LEGEND


Nelson Algren at his Chicago home site as it is being

wrecked for a new expressway, by Art Shay. 1957

INTRODUCTION BY BRUCE BERMAN

Here is a great interview by Mike Thomas, for Chicago Magazine, with Art Shay, the great Chicago photographer of the 1950s, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s and, yes, even the 2000s. He was relentless, gritty, no nonsense, a true artist (because he didn’t consider himself to be one). I used to “soup” his film deep in the bowels of Astra Photo Lab, at 6 E. Lake Street, in 1969. I didn’t know he was even an influence until 40 years later. His main lesson, by example, was: “…keep shooting, always keep shooting.”
Mr. Shay passed on April 28, 2018. There will never be another Art Shay. He was one of a kind, in the manner of Weegee.
READ HERE: https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/April-2018/Legendary-Photographer-Art-Shay-Tells-His-Remarkable-Story/

 

 

 Art Shay by Art Shat

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GIRL AT A COUNTER

 


Girl at a counter (from ChiTown Journal), Chicago, by Bruce Berman.  1968

Photograph and text by Bruce Berman
Getting closer on the Chitown Journal book. Having to dig really really deep into old files. Feels bad and good! The hardest part is seeing what a total rookie I was and how few good images I produced. It tells me the ability to become an image-maker is a journey not a condition. In teaching, it is obvious, this generation with great cameras always in their hands and the ease of making images has sped up the process.
So I dig around in the past and watch them consume the present.
I guess I’m not the “new kid on the block” anymore.

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APPALACHIAN PLAYGROUND

Kid in an Abandoned Ford, Uptown (from ChiTown Journal),

Chicago, by Bruce Berman. 1971

Text and Photograph  by Bruce Berman

Working on my book Chitown Journal.
Digging ahead on this but it’s like a time tunnel to yesteryear. The deeper I dig the darker it gets. Not sure, even, why I’m doing this except that I like looking at the images. When you’re looking back a couple of generations you wonder how these people turned out. What happened? Any millionaires, murderers, poets, policemen, shrinks, grave diggers, photographers, Aldermen?
Can’t know. All that I have is images. They tell many things but never facts and never data.

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CHICAGO INDIAN VILLAGE

 

Carole Warrington and her Menominees. Chicago, 1970 by Bruce Berman

On May 5, 1970, a group of American Indians set up an encampment behind Wrigley Field. Led by Indian activist Mike Chosa, and Menominee Carol Warrington, the Chicago Indian Village (CIV) protested against inadequate housing and social services for Chicago’s 15,000 American Indians. The occupation of Wrigley Field’s parking lot began with CIV’s when a Ms. Warrington was evicted from her Wrigleyville apartment (she refused to pay the rent claiming the apartment was substandard and that the City Housing Authority was not inspecting it and forcing slum landlords to bring it up to code). This eviction led the group to a two-month encampment at a Wrigley Field parking lot.The following summer, Chosa and Worthington led a group of fifty men, women, and children in a two-week occupation of an abandoned parcel of government land, a former Nike missile base,  at Belmont Harbor. Evicted from the site, they took refuge at the Fourth Presbyterian Church.

This action was part the American Indian Movement (AIM), which is still active and is an activist group that fights for Native American rights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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