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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Age, Funklands, Old Cars

PATINA: A RUMINATION

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Funk #731, El Paso, Texas, May 2021,
by ©Bruce Berman

Text/Photography by Bruce Berman
Music Video by Bob Dylan

The funk is almost gone.
The generation that lived it is going down, too.
The 1930s (like this truck), 40s, 50s, 60s and even 70s is just about disappeared (desesparado).
I watch it go.
I watch parts of me go with it.
No energy actually vanishes. It reappears, new, in another form. Life ongoing… just not how we expected.
Is that the lesson of history, of photography of things from the past, of this image, Funk #731?
This truck could be rehabbed. Buffed up. Sprayed new. But it won’t be new. Glossier than it ever was. But it won’t be new. It could be stripped down to its individual pieces and bits, item by item, pump by pump, ball joint by ball joint, reassembled.
But it won’t be new.
Can I be?

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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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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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Documentary Photography, Funklands, Texas

CROWN OF CANUTILLO, TEXAS: RUMINATION ON FACTS

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Crown of Canutillo, Texas. By Bruce Berman, 2015

Text by Bruce Berman

Whatever this crown was announcing is long gone. A bar? A restaurant? A store? Probably a bar… but who knows?

The photograph of the Crown of Canutillo, Texas is what remains (and perhaps a memory here and there).

Who constructed it? Why a crown in this funky little town that’s on the border up against New Mexico? Was there dancing?

Who knows?

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Cars, Funklands, New Mexico, Roadside Attractions

TRUCK WARRIOR

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Twisted Ford. Doña Ana, New Mexico, 2014

We like old cars because they’re like older people. A little twisted, Smashed up a little. Never gonna be what they were. Their very existence holds clues and mysteries about where they’ve been, what they did, where they lived, what happened to them.

The mysteries: What happened to twist her teeth? When did her paint  disappear? What color had she been before the golden rust appeared? What tasks did this truck warrior perform through her long and, I am sure, honorable service? Who mourned her decent?

These things we will never know. There’s the limitation of a photograph: her past cannot be known, nor her future. There is only this, my noticing of now.

I guess the ultimate question is, does she still run?

¿Se serve?

If so, who does she serve and what service is left to do?

 

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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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African-American, America, Displaced Communities, Documentary Photography, Funklands, Life, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, social displacement, Street Photography, The Americas, The Human Condition

BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE

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Bridge to Somewhere, El Paso, Texas. ©2015 Bruce Berman
Bridge to Somewhere, El Paso, Texas. ©2015 Bruce Berman

Text and Words by Bruce Berman

 

The meteorologists call this a “High Pressure system being pushed out by a Low Pressure system.”

Photographers will admit “every once in a while things come together and you get a lucky.”

What do I call it? What does one get for being out there, every evening and every day, always with your “axe (camera)at the ready, often coming home with nothing but the pleasure of having been out there trying?”

The funny thing is, as usual, I was in a part for town I’d never been in before (there are few left). It is a very unusual ‘hood for El Paso. In another city one would call it the “ghetto.” Here, no one thinks there is a ghetto. Being a predominantly latino city (82%), if you have a neighborhood that is lower income, the natural thing is to call it a barrio. This neighborhood was definitely “low income,” and of the three people I conversed with, two had been drinking alcohol to the point of inebriation. It is a mostly Black neighborhood, unusual in El Paso that is only 4% African-American.

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Documentary Photography, El Paso, Funklands, Old Cars, Roadside Attractions, Street Photography

HAPPY HOUR EL PASO

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Text and photograph by Bruce Berman

 

El Paso is in transition. It was always complicated. There was the whole “Southwest” thing and then again, there was the whole Chicanismo thing, and then again there was the cowboy thing, and then again there was a certain ex Pat vibe for 60s and 70s refugees who never went home.

And there was the growing suburban thing, the Ohio is too cold and El Paso is affordable tilt.

Viva complication!

Now El Paso is getting more simple. It is trying to spruce itself up and become a destination. They have a baseball team downtown now, and a restored fancy movie theater within walking distance of it and there are bicycle riders and bicycle lanes everywhere ( a sure sign that the “texture days” are done).

It’s still El Paso but some (real estate developers and those that are young that can’t quite make it out) hunger for it to be Cincinnati. Good luck.

For those who have known El Paso for many decades, to see court jester-dressed bicyclists pedaling through downtown is jarring. It is a pure contrast to the bruised authenticity that has been El Paso’s greatest strength (for me), for those of us who have been hiding here.

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