the colors of life (preview)

I've probably already written a lot here about my relationship with Yana. She was the girl who completely changed my life. When I met her in Barcelona, I was crazy about her from the very first moment. After my 25-year relationship with a woman my age, it was my first time falling in love with a "little girl" - she was 24 at the time, but you could have thought she was only 17 or 18, and I was 52 but looked 51 and a half :-) - and I can safely say that there was no male erotic dream that she didn't more than fulfill.

Eventually we became a couple, I gave up my regular life as a professional photographer with a studio in Switzerland and moved to Barcelona. Yana moved in with me. We lived what is called an "amour fou", an actually impossible relationship borne by irresistible mutual attraction and unrestrained erotic passion without any limits.

I wouldn't want to miss a moment of this wonderful and important time for me, but of course there were also difficulties. I was an older man, albeit, as an artist, not quite conventional, but already quite calm and with my relatively fixed ideas about how life - and a relationship - should be. (I learned a lot and think I actually got younger during this time thanks to Yana). She, on the other hand, was a wild Latina girl, hungry for experience and an active life. Then there were the cultural differences - she was a typical South American Argentinian discovering Europe in every respect, while I was a punctual, reliable, almost typical Swiss person used to a regular life.

It was probably clear to outsiders that this would not last forever, even earlier than it was to us, who were floating on clouds in the heights of sensual passion. But it was barely three years before we separated for the first time.

Yana moved to Madrid where she rented a room in an apartment as a subtenant. I stayed in Barcelona and somehow tried to continue living without her. We had promised not to pursue each other and to go our own ways. But only a few weeks (3, 4, 5 - I can't remember) later, Yana sent me an email under the pretext of asking me for permission to publish some photos on her Facebook.

A few emails went back and forth, with the usual "how are you?" etc., until Yana finally said that the other residents of the shared apartment were all on vacation and it would be an opportunity to visit her. That same evening I was on the bus from Barcelona to Madrid...

When I saw Yana again and we fell into each other's arms hungrily, I realized that I wasn't the only one who had suffered from the separation. The slender Yana had lost several kilos and was now really thin, she shouldn't have lost one more kilo! Her expression was tired and exhausted.

Well, we spent some wonderful days together and that led to us traveling to Paris together over Christmas/New Year and then finally living together in Barcelona for another six months until the final separation came. But that's another story.

When I took out the camera in her messy little girl's room to take a few souvenir photos, Yana picked out her most colorful piece of clothing: let me bring some color into this grey room!

Here is a beautiful series of that moment, with lots of color. Even though the color that slowly but surely came back into my life was not in Yana's clothes, but rather underneath...