Juan Manuel Ezquibel is a photographer in the Plaza of Granada, Nicaragua. He has worked in this plaza for most of his life, first assisting his father Juan and then, taking over the family business when he was seventeen years old. When originally used film, then Polaroid, and now, digital (using a small printer). When asked, how long have you been a photographer, he replies, “Desde que nací (since I was born).” Worldwide, every plaza has a photographer, much like Juan, making portraits for passports, for festival occasions, for friends afar and a multitude of reasons. The cell phone camera lurks. How much longer will there be a need for photographers like Juan Manuel?
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.”
