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I set out to make a book about the love story between my mum and dad only when my dad's illness was advanced enough for me to understand, or think I understood at that point, that he was fading away. To see a loved one fading away, dissolving, is terrifying. It is a path to the abyss.

My mum and dad met one night in 1969 in São Paulo. She lived in Brazil and was 17, he lived in Argentina and was 27. After exchanging letters every day for two weeks, my father travelled to see her to propose that they spend the rest of their lives together. She accepted and they did.

Fifteen years ago my dad was diagnosed with a slow form of Alzheimer's disease. During those years my mum dedicated her life to caring for him and researching the disease and its processes in the hope of finding a cure. She also arranged the new dynamics of their lives so that they could do, as much as possible, the things that brought them back to life. To them I am grateful.

‘El Canto del Cisne’ is a quiet tribute to the incredible love story between the parents of photographer Flavia Schuster. After meeting in São Paulo in 1969, they got married after just two weeks of exchanging letters every day. The book shares their intimate letters and photographs from that time. After her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2017, her mother dedicated her life to caring for him. Documenting a lifetime of love, the slow deterioration of her father, and the care given by her mother over the years, it also includes the evaluation tests her father took, touching images of her parents’ lives together in old age, and a moving dedication from the author herself.