The way Nikos Kessanlis photographed Chrysa Romanou for years has nothing to do with the usual holiday souvenirs that couples bring back from a trip. At first glance, one perceives the obsessive focus of the lens on something mysterious, eccentric, and peculiar.

To approach it, we must forget everything we know, everything we have learned to regard as a photographic portrait. And we must familiarize ourselves with a set of characteristics that fundamentally differentiate holiday photography, transforming it into a priceless story.

What does Kessanlis do? Something akin to what Caspar David Friedrich did in the 18th century, that unmatched painter of romantic landscapes, dark skies, and Gothic ruins. He places his wife in the landscape because that is the only way to photograph the sights. He seems to believe that a notable presence like Chrysa ("believe me when I say / she was beautiful," writes Miroslav Holub) not only gives the landscape the intensity it needs but also the reason for its existence.

If the visual confession of the allure of the Other is not the most romantic conception of companionship, then what is? [...] Now that the model and the photographer no longer live, I struggle to understand how a heroine wins eternity, without even the ambition to become a heroine. Is it the gaze? The power of the pattern? The gradual familiarity? No, it is the sincerity.

The photographer is sincere, the model is sincere as well. Something cellular, something we owe to the primal narratives around the fire, allows us to discern the sincerity of intent, to separate it from melodrama, pretension, and narcissism. A man photographs his wife. In the photograph, she is not alone – they are both present.

The one who looks and the one who (does not) passively surrenders to the gaze. They are not even just the two of them. It is all of us who look at Nikos looking at Chrysa. As readers and viewers, we identify and suffer when the narrative sweeps us away and pulls us into a private scene. Into a scene that becomes our own. "It is I who looks, I who am looked at," we say unconsciously, playing the oldest, most comforting, and educational role-playing game.