This young boy lived in an apartment building directly across the street from where most of the Latin Kings in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood hung out. Note the L/K scrawled on the wall behind him. I had just photographed several people upstairs in the apartment building and was coming back down when I saw him looking out through the window in the stairwell, seemingly lost in the shadows. He looked up at me as I focused the camera. I remember thinking how tricky the exposure would be because of the hard light coming in through the door. I quickly took a meter reading off the wall in the right of the frame, adjusted the aperture and got the shot. According to the National Gang Crime Research Center, most Latin Kings first become aware of gangs at the age of eight. This young man became aware of them much earlier.
