1970s, Funklands, Preservation

JEAN’S GAMS, EL PASO, TEXAS

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Jean’s Gams, El Paso, Texas, 1975

Photo and Text by Bruce Berman

All the signs are gone, or gone to a hipster bar somewhere in America. The Funk is sanitized. Hosiery bar? Really? How un Gucci.
For me that era was a treasure chest waiting for me to open it and when I did… TREASURE!
You got anything to compare to this, now?
Somehow the Walmart Women’s section just doesn’t have the juice.
Is there anywhere on this planet now that isn’t manufactured?
I think there is.
Not sharing. Going. My soul needs authenticity. I guess everyone’s does. We’re on our own.

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El Paso, Iconography, Labor

RENT UR _______?

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Rent ur _________?, El Paso, Texas, March 5, 2023 by Bruce Berman

For staff photographers working in the newspaper world, this kind of photo used to be called an “Enterprise Photo,” meaning the photographer, driving around, usually from assignment to assignment would be on the alert for feature photos that his/her editor might use to spice up the next paper’s edition … maybe.
Old habits die hard.
So, here’s today’s enterprise photo.

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Documentary Photography, New Mexico, Photography That Matters

THE MEES AND DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

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Right there, right in La Mesa, New Mexico, four days ago, is the lesson on why we do DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY!
My documentary photography class at New Mexico State University (NMSU) has been doing a project for the past twelve years, the Small Village New Mexico project (SVNM), documenting the small villages in southern New Mexico.
One of the students’ favorites towns is La Mesa. Probably because there has been one guy, Joe Mees, who rebuilds cars and Harleys, and has always been very welcoming to the students. It doesn’t hurt that he looks very cool!
Last Thursday, we met Tim Mees, Joe’s son.. He told us of that “Joe has been bed-ridden for about a year.”

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Chicago, Magic, Photography

PINHOLE #1-CHICAGO 1971

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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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Interstate, Roadside Attractions, Transportation, Trucks

I-10 RAIN

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I-10 Rain, January 2023 by Bruce Berman

Got trucks on my mind.
By buddy Gary drives them (1 million miles plus).
I live with them every week in my 100 mile r/t on I-10 to New Mexico (and back to Texas).
I totally flipped out when the Canadian truckers went all wild and barreled down onto to the Ottawa capitol.
I live over a truck yard three blocks from the border to México.
They’re massive, powerful, essential and cool.
Period.

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El Paso, I-10, Journeys

DOG ON THE RUN

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I-10 Dog, El Paso, Texas, 2011

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCE BERMAN

When I first got to El Paso, I ran into a guy and he told me, “El Paso is just a truck stop on I-10.”
He didn’t mention the desert, the border, the mountains, the river, Juárez, etc.
I’ve lived in El Paso for almost 45 years. It’s all those things I mentioned but, it’s also “… just a truck stop on I-10.”
It’s been fancied up lately. I’ve seen it here, before. Somebody makes out, but the fact is, if you want to be hip there’s hipper places. If you’re hip here, you really aren’t. Sorry.
But this faux hipness, which will inevitably lead to another failure, sandpapers over the very thing that is actually the cool thing about El Paso: it’s not “hip” at all! That’s its charm. That’s not pathetic. That’s genuine.
Mediocre hipness? Not cool. Genuine ruin and authenticity?
Seductive.
That allure is gone from here now. It’s crowded. The border is a mess. The hipsters are stunningly ordinary. The old folks are not of this land. They’re like the new highways, faster, less fun. Generations have passed. People that were of this land, that left, that came back, have now packaged the cultural past and have covered themselves in a cultural identity that is but a fabrication, an identity that was their grandparents, without the sweat and sabrosa.
Development. What a euphemism. [Hit there CONTINUE READING tab, below]

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California, Culture, Documentary Photography

HIGH SCHOOL BEACH

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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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America, Culture, Documentary Photography, Urban

THE GRID COMETH: EXURBIA #7

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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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Documentary Photography, El Paso, Funklands

THE KEY TO HEAVEN

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San Pedro key, Alameda Street, El Paso, Texas, 2016

El Paso, Texas, 2016

Photograph and text by Bruce Berman

This is about “it” folks.

The last of this barrio, this old ‘hood, known in earlier days as El Pujido (the “push” referencing some knife fights the deteriorating barrio came to be known by in the fifties and sixties).

From the west is coming a vicious storm of hipsterism, of micro brewery culture, restaurants with fuzzy foo foo pinched across the top of, well, some tiny thing underneath.

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Agriculture, Mesilla Valley, New Mexico

TWO WAY HORSES

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Horse barn. Mesilla Valley, New Mexico, 2018

Photograph and text by Bruce Berman

The Mesilla Valley extends from Radium Springs, New Mexico, to the west side of El Paso, Texas. It is intersected by the Rio Grande river (which becomes the Rio Bravo on the Mexican side, which begins in El Pas/Juárez) The valley is  characterized by its few remaining bosques, as well as its native cottonwood trees.

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Documentary Photography, Funklands, Texas

REDOING THE CLOCK

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Redoing The Clock. El Paso, Texas, 2018

It’s been 5:00 o’clock at The Clock on Dyer Street for as long as I’ve been in El Paso (43 years).

It’s reassuring that time does not change particularly after 43 years (if you know what I mean).

But even in a land where time stands still, once in awhile, roadside signs need to be renewed.

It’s an art form. The letters are made of rubbery plastic. You have to know what you’re doing and this phantom sign renewer does. Name? Withheld. Working for the restaurant? Not saying. Getting paid? Maybe.

It’s almost 5:00PM for this image. It’ll be almost 5:00AM in twelve hours.

Even a broken clock is right… twice a day.

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America, Architecture, California, Culture, Roadside Attractions

ROGER MINNICK: SOUTHLAND

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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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America, Culture, Documentary Photography, Photojournalism, Roadside Attractions

ERNST HAAS

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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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America, Culture, Design, Documentary Photography, Funklands, History

The Funklands

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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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New Mexico, Roadside Attractions, Street Photography

Little House on Wheels In New Mexico

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Van and palms, Las Cruces, New Mexico, 2015
Van and palms, Las Cruces, New Mexico, 2015

Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman

Funk.

There’s a little left.

The era of funk is passing.

What’s left is either pure decay or rot from an era of plastic, synthetics and lack of design distinction.

What would you rather see, a decaying car from the 40s, 50’s or 60s or a decaying anything from afterwards? Afterwards it’s just junk that was of little endearment before it fell into disuse.

Besides, the stuff from the post war era is almost gone, all hung up in bars in places like Austin, Portland, Cincinnati, Boca Raton and Chicago.

Authentic ruin is hard to come by. It’s a good investment for those who aspire to never ever actually live with it.

The “backlands” of the USA are either redeveloped or falling into unlivable ruin.

There are people in there, by choice or circumstance.

My next era of work will be an exploration of Authentic Ruin in the Backlands.

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Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, social displacement, Sub Continent, The Human Condition, War

Dhiraj Singh: The (New) Eyes Of India

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From “Six Feet Under,” ©2009Dhiraj Singh

For more work by Dhiraj Singh, SEE: http://www.dhirajsingh.com/01.htm

Dhiraj Singh is a Photojournalist who lives in Mumbai, India. His work has been published in numerous international magazines and online journals, including Newsweek, Vanity Fair, msnbc.com, The Wall Street Journal, L’Expresso, and, many others. He has won numerous awards (see his “bio,” on his site, above) and participated in many exhibitions. His pictures of the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 were part of the prestigious group exhibition titled, ‘Bearing Witness’ held in Mumbai in 2009.

Documentaryshooters is honored to have permission to publish Mr. Singh’s work. We feel he has the insights and skills to show India as it is, depicting its greatness and its struggles, its deep and ancient soul as well as its modern and energetic heart. He, as no other photographer has, since, the great Raghu Rai’s seminal work of the 1970’s, ’80’s and 90’s, not only shows India and the sub continent, he makes us feel it.

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Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, The Americas, The Human Condition

Displacement In The “Heartland”

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SEE: http://mediastorm.org/0023.htm

A documentary project on Displacement…in the “Heartland!

This photographer shows how “progress,” comes to everywhere and the displacement is not limited to indigenous people either. In the end it is the interests of Capital weighed against the interests of Labor that is the issue of land appropriation and displacement.

Let this documentary speak for itself.

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