McAllen attorney Bobby Ramirez grew up in Roma in the 1960s and 70s. He attended a parochial school, ‘the convent’ in Rio Grande City, the same school his father, noted physician Dr. Mario Ramirez, had attended. “Roma was a great place to grow up, a really great place to raise kids,” Ramirez recalled.
So when Ramirez and his wife Irene, a lawyer with a mediation practice, were opening The Ramirez Law Firm together nine years ago and wanted something to make them stand out from the crowd, they thought of the Ramirez family’s 200 years in the Rio Grande Valley. Images of historic structures now fill the law office. “It is what makes our firm different from any other. It shows Bobby’s roots — his family’s — in the Valley,” Irene said. They also communicate a link to old-fashioned values.
The couple commissioned Brownsville architectural photographer Greg Phelps to photograph iconic sites in Starr County and the Valley.
“I met with Bobby and Irene, and we came up with a list of things they were interested in that would help tell the story,” Phelps said. “I would go to each site and walk around the subject for a while until I found the angle that would best tell the story. You don’t just drive up and go snap-snap. A local historian, a really wonderful man, went around with me when I was looking at some of those buildings. He knew everything.”
After spending several hours at each location capturing images in black and white, Phelps turned to post-production work. He removed ugly street signs and power lines from the image of the Ramirez Variety Store, which the attorney’s great-grandfather had opened in the late 19th century. The Roma Suspension Bridge, dating to 1928, was still draped in ancient strings of Christmas lights and stray cables. Each of the three bridges’ images took about five hours to clean up in post-production, Phelps said. When looking at images of historical structures, viewers prefer to have modern intrusions removed.
The images, approximately 30 inches by 44 inches, evoke the ambiance of an earlier era and invite introspection in part because they are not stark black and white. “I felt this subject matter worked better if I gave it a slight tone. In the old days, in the darkroom, a photographer would put the paper in a toning solution. I used the digital version of that,” Phelps said. “I think it was worth the time.”
The bridge photographs and the images of Los Ebanos ferry, the river, various buildings and stone work all capture distinct memories that law office visitors respond to. The window-walled conference room next to the lobby displays large black and white photographs of the Roma bridge. “Most people who come in say, ‘I know where that is. I’ve been under the bridge,’” said Ramirez. The images bring up memories for him, too, like the buzz of tires rumbling over the open metal grid of the last suspension bridge on the Rio Grande.
To read more of this story by Eileen Mattei, read the April 2015 edition of VBR under the “Current & Past Issues” tab on this website, or pick up a copy on news stands.