PRETTY IN PINK-ISH

Mannequin queen, Calle Lerdo, Juárez, 2004

Photograph and text by Bruce Berman

Lerdo is a street of dreams and fancy.
It’s the main street in old Juárez where people go for their Quinciñera gowns, or wedding dresses or tuxedos or custom made anythings.
On any Saturday, families come there, and order clothes for whichever ceremony one of their members are about to attend.
Packs of rovers, seeking their fantasies.
It’s lovely.

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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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HIGH SCHOOL BEACH

High School Beach, Venice, California, 1949 by Max Yavno

 

Max Yavno worked as a Wall Street messenger while attending City College of New York at night. He attended the graduate school of political economics at Columbia University and worked in the Stock Exchange before becoming a social worker in 1935. He did photography for the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1942. He was president of the Photo League in 1938 and 1939. Yavno was in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945, after which he moved to San Francisco and began specializing in urban-landscape photography.
He was one of several post war photographers who lived and worked in what became a new culture, the Southern California middle class leisure car culture.

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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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ROY DeCARAVA: SHOOT WHAT YOU KNOW

 

Roy DeCarava was one of the most influential documentary photographers of the 1950s-1960s. He was known more for the simplicity and ordinariness of his work than for it being spectacular or showy. His particular importance was photographing the Black community of his native Harlem and for the jazz scene of the era.

For a more thorough descrtiption of DeCarava’s work check out the always insightful Claire O’Neil’s essay at: https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2009/10/decarava.html

 

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THE GRID COMETH: EXURBIA #7

Exurbia #7. Horizon City, Texas, 2018

 

Text and photograph by Bruce Berman

The Exurbia series concentrates on the landscape that is neither suburban nor urban. It is usually found in the lands just beyond the suburbs, places where individuals and small businesses went, years ago, where the land was cheap and undeveloped. Now The Grid is coming to these places, doing what The Grid does: gobble up the land, erase or sandpaper its textures, oust the one-of-a-kind, make things safe and expected, over-electrified and deadingly dull.

Exurbia is the land that is America today, a place where the suburban cookie cutter machine has come and is bringing the American Dream, which for many is the American Bore.

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ROGER MINNICK: SOUTHLAND

Southern California, from Southland, 1975. By Roger Minnick

 

Roger Minnick is the voice and the heart of Southern California, especially in the 1970s and 80s. This was the California that the rest of the USA flocked to. Surfin’ USA!

Minnick always has had his finger on the pulse of the state. He just “gets it.”

For more work by the incredible Minnick, see: https://www.rogerminick.com/southland

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ERNST HAAS

Nature and Machine, ©1975 by Ernst Haas

 

I studied with Ernst, briefly, in 1979. He was a great guy, very honest and one of the most elegant people I ever met. He got excited by Mahler while everyone else was getting excited by the Rolling Stones!

His photography mirrors that elegance. Whether it was for himself or a commercial client (he did a lot of really great stuff for Lufthansa) the work was always personal and usually intriguing.

Enjoy Ernst: http://bit.ly/2BlQZcB

 

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ROTHSTEIN: THE TRUTH ABOUT SKULLS

Text by Bruce Berman

Arthur Rothstein was hand picked by Director Roy Stryker to be one of the original photographers for the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration/FSA). The unit was birthed to be an explainer for agriculture projects that benefited the agrarian sectors of Depression-ravish America. Rothstein’s “eye” was excellent, his technical skills first rate and he always came back with the goods and then some.

Why doesn’t he get the attention of Dorothea Lange or Walker Evans, or, even, Russell Lee?

Was it the cow skull “controversy?”

Perhaps.

For me this “controversy has always seemed,well… overblown. He moved the skull several times and then, finally, settled on the one we all know.

South Dakota Badlands, 1936, Photo by Arthur Rothstein for the FSA

Was he (visually) lying?

I think not.

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MIGRANT FATHER

Migrant Father, June 1938, by Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange’s extended caption:

Old time professional migratory laborer camping on the outskirts of Perryton; Texas at opening of wheat harvest. With his wife and growing family; he has been on the road since marriage; thirteen years ago. Migrations include ranch land in Texas; cotton and wheat in Texas; cotton and timber in New Mexico; peas and potatoes in Idaho; wheat in Colorado; hops and apples in Yakima Valley; Washington; cotton in Arizona. He wants to buy a little place in Idaho

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NO NET AMERICA

Migrant family on highway, California, 1937

Photograph by Dorothea Lange

Extended Caption: California at Last: Example of self-resettlement in California. Oklahoma farm family on highway between Blythe and Indio. Forced by the drought of 1936 to abandon their farm, they set out with their children to drive to California. Picking cotton in Arizona for a day or two at a time gave them enough for food and gas to continue. On this day, they were within a day’s travel of their destination, Bakersfield, California. Their car had broken down en route and was abandoned.

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CROPDUSTER

Cropduster by ©Charles O’Rear, DOCUMERICA/NARA

 

The DOCUMERICA project was created in 1972 and its Director, Gifford Hampshire, tried to recreate the all-encompassing visual story of America that Roy Stryker began in 1936 with the Farm Security Administration project that told the story of the Depression and, more generally, the story of America as it struggled through the Depression and then toward the end in 1939, told the story of a strong America, preparing for war.

Charles O’Rear was one of the notable photographers for DOCUMERICA. For more about him, including the story of how he created Bliss (the iconic Microsoft screen image) view: https://youtu.be/_G5Z8aMctBw

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LANGE AND HER TRANSCRIBED TEXT

Dorothea Lange and the Walkers “Toward Los Angeles.”California,

March 1937 by Dorothea Lange for FSA

 “Next Time Try The Train– Relax.”  

Lange captioned this with the walkers own words: “Well– give me the fare and I will, buddy.  We ain’t walkin’ for our health…”

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MIGRATION 30s STYLE

Dorothea Lange "Ten Children"

Ten Children, March 1937, by Dorothea Lange,
for the RA (courtesy of OMCA)

Text by Bruce Berman
Migrants looking for work goes back the very beginning of America, from the English/Europeans at Jamestown and beyond. One could arguably say that “Native Americans” descended from migrants from China, coming across the Bering land bridge.
In Lange’s era, as the economic Depression of the 1930s deepened and the ecological disasters of drought and erosion progressed there was a massive infra-country migration, primarily from the Great Plains and Texas/Oklahoma, mostly heading west to California.
This migration was heavily documented by the FSA and by others.
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GYPSY ROSE

1941 publicity photo for Gypsy Rose Lee’s

first novel, The G-String Murders.


Article by Bruce Berman
Gypsy Rose Lee was the most famous “stripper” ever. She started out in Burlesque at seven years of age in 1921, transitioned from Vaudeville to Burlesque and was the premier act in the legendary Minsky’s Burlesque. She appeared in sixteen motion pictures, numerous TV shows and authored the book Gypsy in 1957. The book led to the all time great Broadway play Gypsy and she was a ubiquitous personality in multiple media for over five decades.
Very early in World War II, Gypsy Lee was active in promoting patriotism and supporting the troops. In magazine articles she praised American servicemen and even offered to send an autographed pin-up portrait to any GI who asked for one. She encouraged women to take jobs in the war industry and participated in a benefit to raise money for an organization that provided child care. Gypsy performed at dozens of USO shows in a 1943 tour that visited forty Army and Navy posts across the country.
Lee died in 1970. The play “Gypsy” is still played in major and minor productions and still draws audiences worldwide. There haven’t been many like her -if any- since.
One of her best-known quotes is, ” If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly… very slowly.”

 

 

 

 

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The Funklands

The Funklands are where you find them, and, when.

Bruce Berman started this project when he was in his early 20s, in the 1970s, and just starting out in photography. He cruised the highways and the low-ways of America, no particular agenda, stopping often (to the consternation of those driving with him), always looking for the funk, the detritus of other eras, the iconography of his youth and the times before him.

This America is now almost gone. It hangs over bars in places like Austin or Madison, Los Angeles or Chicago. The Funklands have turned into “Fly Over” territory, still there, still quasi rural, but  now, unrobed. The structure of the Funklands, textured, bold, spectacular, has been replaced by franchised plastic, flatness, sameness.

We celebrate corporate identity in the iconography of now, not roosters and skeletons and old Cadillacs.

The Funk has turned from delight to nothingness. Occasionally  there is a McDonald’s that riffs on a local theme, but pretty much not.

The Funk is hard to find.

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