La Mesa, New Mexico Cotton Gin and Water tower, 2019
La Mesa is an unincorporated community in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. Its population was 728 as of the 2010 census. It’s main industry is cotton and chile farming. A popular feather of the town is Chopé’s Bar and restaurant. La Mesa is between the metropolis of El Paso/Juárez and the smaller city of Las Cruces, NM.
Professor Bruce Berman has been a photographer for many decades and a teacher for a few. He started out in Chicago as a street photographer shooting riots for UPI, AP, The Chicago Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor. Mostly interested in photographing people his photography eventually morphed into the idea of doing documentary photography although at the time he didn’t know there was a name for it.
On an assignment, he got lost in the desert and ended up in El Paso and has lived three blocks from Mexico for over forty years.
He has covered the border, northern Mexico, West Texas and the southern United States ever since.
Now concentrating exclusively on documentary photography -and teaching- he has found himself back at his roots.
Teaching at a university has provided Berman with opportunities to do research and work with a new generation of photographers. He calls them “the next great generation of shooters.”
