Andrea & Faviana - de Pavones

Andrea

Here are a couple more portraits of local ticas: two young girls from Pavones, Costa Rica. Andrea was in town for the big Bingo event. My sister Angela used to tutor Andrea in English. I love Andrea's colorful and carefully coordinated outfit, and how the light is illuminating her.

Faviana

My limited knowledge of Spanish makes it difficult to communicate sometimes, but from what I understand, Faviana's mom works at the town's Super (grocery store), and Faviana was waiting for her mom. Faviana seems to present that typical tween mixture of both boredom and curiousity.

Marlon - de Pavones

Marlon

This is Marlon, age 12. He was one of the many curious kids who were intrigued by my large camera while I was shooting in town during a Bingo fundraiser. Marlon is a local kid who has grown up in the Pavones area. I found his somewhat urban style of dress interesting, particularly his shirt which has dollar signs and English words on it professing his "Rawthentic" and "Raw and Uncut" persona. Both the language and the symbols on the shirt are signs of the influence of American culture in Costa Rica. Costa Rican currency is called colones, and the symbol for it looks more like the symbol for a cent.

The familiarity with American dollars, also speaks to the location of Pavones and its proximity to the Panamanian border. Pavones is only about 1 1/2 hours from the border town Paso Canoas. Many locals go there to shop, and I would bet that this shirt was purchased there. Panama uses American currency.

As I tried to communicate with Marlon in my garbled and simplistic Spanish, I told him I would send him a copy of the photo. He responded politely by saying "thank you" in English.

First New Image from de Pavones series

So I've been having a hard time trying to find time to work on my most recent images taken in Costa Rica. I finally have one of the images scanned and edited, and I'm working on printing it right now. This one took a lot of work because I had some sort of light leak, but I was able to repair the image.

Anixia y Tatiana

Anixia and Tatiana are a mother and daughter team that run Brisas del Mar, an open air restaurant with ocean view, that serves the best ceviche in the area (or anywhere for that matter). It is located between the two villages of Pavones and Punta Banco.