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Creating Shared Memories with @balcazardescansa

For more on a father-and-son journey, follow @balcazardescansa on Instagram. To explore more stories from around the Spanish-speaking community, follow @instagramES.

(This interview was conducted in Spanish.)

“Take a picture of me standing here in front of the brown wall so it looks like I’m an elephant bathing in mud,” five-year-old José Balcazar told his father (who goes by the same name), before heading out to a spring festival. Father and son also share an Instagram account @balcazardescansa that records their weekend trips to Michoacán, in the west of Mexico.

“It’s a really nice relationship. He is not only my son, he is my friend,” says the older José, who adds that his son chooses the locations to be photographed while he takes care of the composition and framing of the picture.

“The idea is that when he is comfortable doing his own photos, I can add them to the account,” says Jose. “Sometimes he looks at other users’ pictures and says, ‘Let’s do something like that.’ For instance, I have a photo of a paper boat with a blue background and that is because he saw it on someone else’s feed and wanted me to do something similar.”