In my family there have been many romances, but none as photographic as my Aunt Narcissa’s (Cucha was what everyone called her) to her husband Rene’. He appears to have been an amateur photographer and documented almost every part of their relationship. Most of the photos are of her, dressed as a bathing beauty or engaged in some activity they would do in their leisure. The rare ones are those like this one, where it is the two of them alone, documented by some third wheel that was with them at the time. They married in their twenties and had my cousin Renesito sometime after that. Rene’ was a jeweler, so they probably wanted for nothing. But the revolution changed all that. Soon, he got sick and died. Then Renesito. By that time my aunt was the only one left to take care of my widowed grandmother, as everyone else had died or emigrated. Once my grandmother passed Cucha developed dementia. There was no one left to take care of her but friends and my father was never able to get her out. I guess it makes sense that in her possessions I would find all the pictures from my father’s side of the family. Many of him had been destroyed to hide their relationship to the enemy of the state. When others left or died, they left their pictures with Cucha. There were rules as to what you could take. Most of the pictures are the ubiquitous family snapshots, my Aunt Leonor’s wedding pictures, and then there are all of Rene’s photographs of Cucha. Just from the sheer volume and the feeling one gets from seeing her as he did, you can tell it must have been some kind of love affair.