Smith-Soto’s street photography – the human condition, one frame at a time

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With one quick motion of his finger on the camera shutter release, David Smith-Soto erases the boundaries of time and eternalizes an intimate instant as two lovers stare into each other’s eyes. “It’s a glimpse of intimacy,” said David Flores, photographer and special collections archivist at the University of Texas at El Paso. “This is life one frame at a time.”

The black and white photograph taken in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2000 entitled “Lovers” is one of 26 prints in David Smith-Soto’s street photography exhibit in the Glass Gallery at the University of Texas at El Paso,

Photo Gallery: The Street Photography of David Smith-Soto

Smith-Soto said he was pleased to show some of his 60 years of photography to a large audience, but that the purpose of the show was to raise funds for journalism student internships. “We need to send out more students into the world, so that means we need more funding for that,” said Zita Arocha director of Borderzine, UTEP’s online bilingual magazine. Arocha said it costs approximately $3000 to send one student on an internship.

Fifty years later, it’s déjà vu all over again in Madrid

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MADRID, Spain — Fifty years ago I walked into the Palace Hotel here looking for a cup of coffee and was promptly escorted out by two burly guards. It was Spain at the height of the fascist Franco dictatorship and, at 19, my buddy Mike and I probably looked like communists or worse, like the hippie kids we were, backpacking through Europe, sleeping in youth hostels for 30-cents a night and bathing once every couple of weeks. I carried two Leica cameras with me, my only possessions other than the shirt on my back, and I documented every step of our wanderings from Luxembourg where Icelandic Airlines dropped us off, across the Mediterranean to North Africa where penniless in Tangier we had to scrounge to get back to Madrid. In Madrid, we avoided the museums and any semblance of establishment culture, after all we were following in Hemingway’s footsteps and we spent our time guzzling raspy red wine at the bullfights, scouring for señoritas and scratching poetry on napkins in the cafes. After shooting the bird at the Palace hotel, we walked back to the center of town to our usual haunts near the Plaza Mayor.

Exhibición de fotos capta la violencia de vivir en Ciudad Juárez

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EL PASO, Texas — Fotógrafos fronterizos de El Diario de Juárez capturan la batalla de vivir día a día entre caos y temor en la ciudad más violenta de la frontera. Ahora todos podemos ser testigos de ese ambiente de terror. El 30 de Septiembre se inauguró la exhibición fotográfica Las Otras Batallas, presentada por fotógrafos de El Diario en el Centennial Museum de la Universidad de Texas en El Paso (UTEP). “Esta exhibición es un ejemplo de lo que se puede hacer si las dos ciudades unen esfuerzos. Tomó coordinación e interés binacional y con la participación de personas de los dos lados todo salió muy bien”, dijo la Dr. Moira Murphy-Aguilar, profesora de UTEP y del Centro de Estudios Inter-Americanos y Fronterizos.

El periodismo hoy: el oficio de pulir huesos

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EL PASO, Texas — En el Museo de la Universidad de Texas en El Paso se inauguró recientemente “Las otras batallas” una exhibición que ofrece el trabajo de un grupo de fotoperiodistas de El Diario de Juárez. Es imposible recorrerla sin sentir un escalofrío, sin ponerse a pensar que esa imagen que está ahí es una estampa del realismo más crudo. Es imposible ver cada una de esas fotos sin pensar que quien lanzó el clic es prácticamente un héroe. Octavio Paz escribió una vez “Hablar mientras otros trabajan es pulir huesos”. Esas líneas me hacen pensar cómo, en los últimos años, para un periodista trabajar se ha vuelto una forma de pulir huesos.