The People and Land Along The American Road
Metropolitan in East El Paso, Texas, 2016
Photograph by ©Bruce Berman
1955 Nash* Metropolitan.
Ahead of its time
Austin Motor Company engine.
Body by Pininfarina.
The MSRP for Series III models (in 1955) was $1,527 (Hardtop).
Ahead of its time.
*Nash became Nash-Hudson which became American Motor Company (Ramblers) which became AMC, which was acquired by Renault which sold it to Chrysler which became extinct in 1987.
This is such an unusual Lange photo. The people look -if not prosperous- well dressed, not in transit, not in trouble, not oppressed by The Depression.
Also, the women are sitting. It also shows a lack of real interaction between the photographer and subject. Lange asked, it appears, if it was OK to take the photograph, they, reluctantly (I think) said yes, and her husband (I think), just off camera left, does not leave the scene, protectively.
More importantly, what was Lange doing?
In 1936 John Vachon was a “late” FSA photographer. His original job was to catalog other photographer’s images. He was, at 21, a “filing clerk,” for the FSA library and had little intention of being a photographer. He needed a job.
By 1937, Vachon had become completely familiar with the FSA, its Director, Roy Stryker and the works of the of the FSA photographers.
He wanted in!
Georgia, June 1941. Photo by Jack Delano.
Jack Delano, was one of the group of photographers who fanned out throughout the United States in the 1930’s and 40’s on behalf of the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration (FSA).
Text by Bruce Berman
Dorothea Lange not only photographed the people who were suffering the disaster of the Depression, she got to know them.
Her captions, written and sent to Roy Stryker at the FSA (either with her undeveloped film -which was rare- or with her developed film (she was the only FSA shooter allowed to do so) often were mini Short Stories.
Just east of El Paso,on the edge of town, about 20 miles from downtown, not far from the Rio Grande river that separates the United States from Mexico, there’s only two roads out of town. One is Interstate 10 and the other is the old main highway, U.S. 80, a road that was the main southern link between San Augustine, Florida and San Diego, California.
Just outside of El Paso, the two great roads divide, I10 shooting straight east, like an arrow. U.S. 80 turns south and follows the river until it turn east at Esparanza and then wiggles on, ambling through Texas, heading to the bayous of Louisiana.
The road, now part of El Paso’s east side thins out, about 30 miles from El Paso’s central downtown, then dwindles into Fabens, a farm town, the last town of West Texas.
Vacancy at the Blue Swallow, Tucumcari, NM
©2012 Bruce Berman
The Blue Swallow Motel is on Historic Route 66 (The “Mother Road”) in Tucumcari, NM.
It has been open since 1939.
The NBC Control Room in NYC, 1936
(photographer unknown)
Article by Bruce Berman
What did Russell Lee do when he was on the road? His notes indicate that he did a lot of thinking about what he had shot at the last stop and what he needed to shoot at the next stop. However, in the thousands of miles that he logged in for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) he must have found “blank spaces” in his travels, times when he was bored with the road, even the job and its mission.
February 27, 2016 No Comments
Daragh Vaughn from Dublin Ireland at McDonald’s in Truth or Consequences, NM. He had had surgery for a genetic deformity. He already had the same surgery on his other hand. “To top that,” he says in his Irish brogue, “I’m a piano player!”
Injured Traveler, Truth or Consequences,
New Mexico, 2010American HighwayMusiciansNew MexicoU.S.60