Old Cars – Documentary Shooters

PATINA: A RUMINATION

May 19, 2021 No Comments

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?

America, Documentary Photography, Old Cars

DOCUMERICA: ARTHUR TRESS

July 6, 2018 No Comments

Abandoned Car in Jamaica Bay 06/1973 by Arthur Tress/Documerica Project

For more information on Arthur Tress click here.

Culture, Documentary Photography, Old Cars, Street Photography

FRED HERZOG

November 24, 2017 No Comments

Fred Herzog is a Vancouver photographer and an early user of color in street photography. Born in 1930 (87), he primarily worked in the 1950s and 1960s and taught photography in the Fine Arts Department of the University of British Colombia and the Simon Fraser University.

Documentary Photography, Funklands, Juárez, Mexico, Old Cars, Roadside Attractions, Street Photography

ICE

July 4, 2017 No Comments

Ice truck, Juarez, 1975

(from Walking Juárez)

This is an image from the upcoming book -Walking Juárez- by Bruce Berman. It is one of the images from the story “Iceman.” It will be available on Amazon (Kindle eBook and Print)and in selected bookstores on July 6, 2017.

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

HAPPY HOUR EL PASO

April 18, 2015 No Comments

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.