From where she stood on American soil she could see across the river where Mexican families holed up in shanties. She saw mothers taking their children down to the river to bathe them. Pet goats drank from the river.
Benvenutti's camera, for perhaps the first time on her 10-year photojournalism project documenting Puerto Rican life in America, was not firing.
She did take pictures of the Puerto Rican couple with her, people who had lived in El Paso for several years.
They remembered when the border patrol asked them trick questions to prove they were American Puerto Ricans and not illegals who would use different words to identify everyday objects. They'd ask in English, "say orange." And the couple would say, "china" so often heard in Puerto Rico to describe oranges, not "naranja" the term used in Mexico.
"It was very odd to think that we had all this privilege here and just a few feet away, people were living in metal shacks," Benvenutti said. "El Paso is both wonderful and desolate. You have a very literal sense of what a border means."
In 1994, the idea for the Central Area photographer's book, "American Boricua: Puerto Rican Life in the United States," came to her as she emerged from the 116th Street/Columbia University subway station in New York City. Stepping onto the campus of the journalism institution where she would eventually earn her masters, she felt a disconnect between the ethnic vibrancy of the city and the university.
"I belonged to both of these places, but I don't think these places understood each other," she said sitting in Caffe Vita at Fifth Avenue North, one of her favorite haunts. Her studio is at Republican and Dexter streets on Lower Queen Anne. "I wanted to do something bigger than me."
That is the idea behind her book, to let people know about Puerto Ricans across America, that there are 4.3 million living in the states.
Most Puerto Ricans live in New York City and along the East Coast, but there are many in communities throughout the country, in Texas, Arizona, Montana and about 11,000 in Washington. Few know that, she said. She found it frustrating that a friend of hers was so unaware of Puerto Rican culture, the country, and the people. They were able to sit down for an hour and talk, but that moment only furthered her resolve to get this book out.
She started where she grew up in North Philadelphia, immersing herself in the community, taking pictures of dad and family members. She remembered when her aunt Jane, the one who inspired her to be a photojournalist, would make portraits of her when she was a kid.
Benvenutti's first camera was a Pentax K-1000. Often she took pictures with it during her high school days in Rochester, N.Y. She won a school photo contest with that camera, too. She knew even then that she'd be a veterinarian, an astronaut or a journalist. At 15, she said that when girls are thinking about their wedding day, she was thinking about when she would be living and reporting in Africa.
After photographing family in Philadelphia, she fanned out, asking friends if they had friends or relatives in other states. She contacted chambers of commerce and social organizations in cities around the country.
Gradually she discovered there were Puerto Ricans living throughout the states, in Texas, Nevada and Montana. She learned that, though it's relatively unknown, Puerto Ricans have been living out west for decades. They were recruited to work ranches in Montana, for example. Her uncle was one.
"He worked on a ranch for three years and loved it," she said. "The stories are fascinating."
Of the many pictures she has already taken that illustrate the daily lives of Puerto Ricans in America, one of her favorites captures the love and spontaneity in the life of one woman and her son living in Montana. Benvenutti uses a day-in-the-life photography style for the book and so had been with the woman and her son on a regular basis.
The woman, despite concerns from her family, set out to Montana to make a life for herself. And one morning before work, the woman was sitting at her breakfast table, drinking coffee with Benvenutti when the woman's son came tired-eyed out of his bedroom and leaned into his mother's maternal embrace, her eyes shut, her love for him without boundary.
Benvenutti's camera whirred and clicked.
Benvenutti is financing the project with money she makes as a professional photographer at her own studio. She also freelances with the daily papers and does other commercial work.
Being her own boss gives her the latitude necessary to make American Boricua happen, traveling across the country for months at a time. When money runs low, she comes back to Seattle, works and researches for grant money. The City of Seattle's Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, as part of its 2008 CityArtist annual funding program, recently awarded her $8,000. In return, Benvenutti will exhibit 20 black-and-white photos from her project. Seattle gallery space is being finalized for the August 2009 exhibition: "Boricua: Puerto Rican Life in the American West."
Meanwhile, negotiations with a publisher should be completed by early September and the release of the book by this time next year.
What has kept her going, in addition to the desire to please her family, to educate the uninformed, to fulfill her journalistic destiny ("every journalist has a dream story in them, and when your heart speaks you have to listen to that," she said), is the knowledge that there are many Puerto Ricans around the country cheering her on. One man, in an email wrote: "Where have you been? We need you."
"That," Benvenutti said, "is what gets me through when the days are tough."
Myke Foldger may be reached via editor@sdistrictjournal.com.[[In-content Ad]]