50 years later: a touching photo cycle about couples celebrating their golden wedding

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

French writer François La Rochefoucauld skeptically noted that "true love is like a ghost: everyone talks about it, but few have seen it." Looks like a New York photographer Lauren Fleishman incredibly lucky: she had a chance to meet several married couples, whose love has not faded away for half a century.

Idea photocycle "Love Ever After" was born to Lauren Fleischman after the death of her grandfather in 2007. While sorting out his things, she found a stack of letters written by him during the Second World War. The messages were addressed to her beloved, Lauren's grandmother. It was this incident that became the starting point in the photographer's intention to find couples who have lived together for more than 50 years and capture their love stories.

Each photo in the cycle is accompanied by a short story about the life of a married couple. For example, in one of the photographs you can see the Rubinstein family from Burklin: he is 88, and she is 85. They admit that they only dream of living for another 5-6 years. Moses Rubinstein says that his goal is to live to 94, and so that by that time his grandson will be able to find a decent job, and his granddaughter will get married. Grandparents hope that their grandchildren can live the same happy life as they do.

Lauren Fleischman's collection contains the most incredible stories. Among these married couples, there is the most patient couple, the Shen family from China: lovers who lived in different cities, after they met, had to write letters to each other for five years, and only then get married. There are also "long-lived couples": the Small couple have lived together for 68 years, and the Futterman family even met back in 1939.

We can only admire how these couples managed to carry love through their whole lives, because in the photographs there are absolutely happy people, whose stories testify that true feelings can overcome all obstacles. By the way, in addition to Lauren Fleischman, photographer Lauren Wells fell under the spell of eternal love, who created a romantic love-story timed to coincide with the wedding anniversary of Nina and Gramp, a married couple who have been married for 61 years.