A Site That Honors, Displays And Discusses Documentary Photography
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.
Bud Love is from my new book -BACKLAND- now available on Amazon. It’s a book about wandering in the 1975-2000 era.
https://amzn.to/3K6SwVT
Stay tuned.
Love’s, Exit Zero (I10), Fall 2019
Pistachio in Alamogordo, New Mexico, 2015
The pistachio, a member of the cashew family, is a small tree originating from Central Asia and the Middle East. The tree produces seeds that are widely consumed as food.
OR….
Is a ginat sculpture in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
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?
I do not know what’s going on here but I will find out.
What I do know is that in the Mesila Valley of southern New Mexico there is less land producing Alfalfa, cotton, chile, onions and corn and more land producing pecans (which these are).
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
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
Photograph by Robert Frank, Florida, 1958
This eye has been on America for a long time now.
We think we’ve been watching the world through it but, in reality, it has not only been watching us, but sucking us into its world of fantasy and deceit.
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.
“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…”
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.
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.
Terry and the Dinosaur, Benson, Arizona
October 8, 2011 by Bruce Berman
