Daisuke Ito (Japan, 1976) has lived and traveled extensively in South and Central America. His series Losolmo gym is about a boxing gym in Cuba’s second city of Santiago.
The boys here train barefoot, dressed in little more than rags. The equipment is decrepit. The boxing ring floor is unevenly patched together, the ropes are frayed and there is barely enough equipment to go round.
Each of these impoverished Cuban boys carries the dream of becoming a champion. I think it is not for the money, not even for the fame, but for these boys to be a boxer is the noble and heroic pinnacle of human aspiration.
The gym has produced a remarkable 4 world champions.
Daisuke Ito was born in 1976 in Japan. He had studied photojournalism for two years in 2000-2002 at IDEP in Barcelona, Spain. He had wandered around Central and South America for seven years in 2002-2009. He started his career as a photographer in 2007 in a slum named Chapeu Mangueira in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His work has been published by magazines in Brazil and Japan. He moved to Tokyo in 2009.
All copyright Daisuke Ito.
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