Text by Nathan Zarate BB has been doing selfies for most of his photography career, which spans six decades. Sometimes he uses them as a test of equipment. Sometimes he uses them to test his mood. Sometimes he uses them to “send a message.” This one was photographed at his south side loft in El Paso, Texas. Juárez, México is in the background.
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.”
