mucha lucha
Ok, so it has been a while. I’ve been completely consumed with life, work, and everything in between. Even managed to squeeze in a vacation. Crazy. Anyway, in between all of the freelance and actual “work work,” I’m going through my archives refurbishing the site (not done yet) and working on a bunch of promo headed to the desks of unsuspecting editors. Along the way, I get distracted by other photo blogs. Recently, two of my favorites – Sol Neelman and Matt Slaby – both had recent killer Lucha Libre shoots, which led me to this resurrecting this recent shoot. I shot it a few months back, but realized I had never posted it. Alas, here it is.
This was about as low key as you get for a Lucha event. The Latin American Wrestling group started holding these events in a old bombed out Ramada Inn lobby conference room complete with folding chairs, flickering fluorescent lights, and stripped walls and floors. Very cool. The group of eight or so guys were quite the hodgepodge of men at various stages in their lives – a bank teller, an ex-soldier, a DJ, a high school student. Very random, but insanely welcoming and great to hang out with for the evening. Of course, there was a plan in place for the winners of losers of each match, but they didn’t really stick to it. It became a fluid barrage of body slams and slap-happy punches to a small crowd of mostly families with children who sat in awe.
These guys were very open. Very. When it came to the masked men, however, no photos without the masks, and when the mask was on, they were completely different people. They became Diez Maracas, El Chico Loco, and El Jugador. Dudes you didn’t really want to mess with.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Much respect for a fellow lucha aficionado. Nice stuff, Chip.