Joel Salcido recently donated several of his photographs from his 2002 Roma, Texas series, Entre Fantasmas. Roma is a small town on the Texas-Mexico border and was the location of the filming of the 1951 Viva Zapata movie, which starred Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn.
Joel’s photographs are an homage to this town and culture, including the filming of the movie, the people and the Catholic traditions during Holy Week at Easter. In appreciation for this gift of photographs and to help celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, The Wittliff is honored to present several of Joel’s images from this series.
More on the photographer:
Joel Salcido began his career as a photography intern with The El Paso Times in 1979 and worked as staff photographer for the newspaper for several years. His awards include the Dorrance D. Roderick Distinguished Service Award for a special section on the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico (1985), the Best of Show award from the New Mexico Associated Press Managing Editors (1990) for a special project titled “Spooks,” a section dealing with the inhalant abuse problem in El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, and first place honors from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association for documenting the political and social transitions in Cuba, the last Communist stronghold (1991). That same year, Joel left as photo editor of The El Paso Times to pursue commercial and editorial photography. In 1999, he moved his family to Spain for a sabbatical year to work on his fine art photography, where his Millennium series was created. In 2004 he was one of three Fulbright scholarship finalists for a Bolivian photography project and was nominated for the 2005 Art House Texas Prize. In 2017, Trinity University Press published his first monograph, The Spirit of Tequila, which celebrates the tradition, culture, and myth of this iconic drink. He continues to work as an editorial and fine art photographer and produces work for galleries and publications such as USA Today, Texas Monthly and Texas Highways. He lives and works in San Antonio.