Joy, Urban, Women

LITTLE ITALY BABE SISTERS

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Little Italy Babe Sisters, NYC, 2000

Photo and text by Bruce Berman
(Disclaimer on this post’s title: Spare me, I don’t care!)


In the middle of chaos, glory! Three sisters. Puerto Ricaños. Read their personalities! It’s right there. Happy. Proud. Sexy. Confident. Even the waiter is having fun. A lazy wandering day, sitting at a street cafe in Little Italy at a tiny round table, slurping Italian Ices, with friends, Abraham Verghese and Irene Connelly, heading to the U.S. Open. Happy day for me, tennis, before the political deluge of now.
Photography works in a lot of ways but the best of all is memory.

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Chicago, social displacement, Urban

ART SHAY: IN YOUR FACE LEGEND

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Nelson Algren at his Chicago home site as it is being

wrecked for a new expressway, by Art Shay. 1957

INTRODUCTION BY BRUCE BERMAN

Here is a great interview by Mike Thomas, for Chicago Magazine, with Art Shay, the great Chicago photographer of the 1950s, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s and, yes, even the 2000s. He was relentless, gritty, no nonsense, a true artist (because he didn’t consider himself to be one). I used to “soup” his film deep in the bowels of Astra Photo Lab, at 6 E. Lake Street, in 1969. I didn’t know he was even an influence until 40 years later. His main lesson, by example, was: “…keep shooting, always keep shooting.”
Mr. Shay passed on April 28, 2018. There will never be another Art Shay. He was one of a kind, in the manner of Weegee.
READ HERE: https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/April-2018/Legendary-Photographer-Art-Shay-Tells-His-Remarkable-Story/

 

 

 Art Shay by Art Shat

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Chicago, Street Photography, Urban

GIRL AT A COUNTER

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Girl at a counter (from ChiTown Journal), Chicago, by Bruce Berman.  1968

Photograph and text by Bruce Berman
Getting closer on the Chitown Journal book. Having to dig really really deep into old files. Feels bad and good! The hardest part is seeing what a total rookie I was and how few good images I produced. It tells me the ability to become an image-maker is a journey not a condition. In teaching, it is obvious, this generation with great cameras always in their hands and the ease of making images has sped up the process.
So I dig around in the past and watch them consume the present.
I guess I’m not the “new kid on the block” anymore.

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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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