Los Chavos

During a workshop in San Miguel, Mexico, I was struggling to find a project to present to the class. Typically a shy person, my discomfort with photographing people was a bigger problem than the language barrier. Then, one morning, I saw three boys in the back of a pickup truck spitting balls through straws. Their laughter and play made me forget my project. Even without knowing the language, I was able to gesture the idea of taking their picture. The boys immediately hammed it up for my Polaroid and I snapped off a few images to hand over to them. “Los Chavos” had begun. The rest of the week I played hide and seek, leap frog and photographed 15 boys for two hours while they made pyramids and tackled one another.

Enter Los Chavos