Moreno was a World War Two nose-gunner in a B23 and flew twenty missions over Germany in 1944 and 1945. I was “one day” new in the neighborhood, three blocks from the Cordoba Bridge in El Paso. His shop was on Alameda Street. He invited me into his cleaning shop and showed me photographs of his airplane and of other bombers. And then he announced… most of the nose gunners were Chicanos.” I was amazed.
“Why, I asked?” “Because, he replied, obviously setting up a punchline, “we were the only ones small enough to fit in there!” I appreciated his humor. He told me to come back anytime I wanted, we could talk some more. I had “arrived.”
I knew, from that point on, my mission was to be photographing and gathering stories on El Paso’s Southside. I have done so.
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.”
