It was just after the first wave of the pandemic, as airports cautiously reopened and the city inhaled for the first time in months. Fear still lingered everywhere — in the air, in the news, in the distance people kept from each other. But at Arpoador Beach, the kids weren’t afraid.

I arrived before sunrise, hoping to find the rocks empty. The ocean was still dark, the sky barely blue, and for a moment the world felt suspended between danger and relief — between death and life.

Out on the rocks, boys crouched, leapt, and disappeared into the water — their laughter cutting through the silence of the early hour. In those brief movements, I saw something primal: freedom colliding with risk, joy set against the weight of a pandemic.

These photographs live in that fine line — a fragile threshold where fear and exhilaration coexist.