What does it mean to be queer and in love? For eight years photographer Jake Naughton and his partner Juan Anibal Sosa Iglesias have tried to tease out the answer through a collaborative photography project. Their first book, When We Were Strangers, deftly examines the experience of loving another from the perspective of a couple deeply entrenched in their relationship.

In lush, lyrical images and raw prose in English and Spanish, Naughton and Sosa Iglesias seek to understand this journey they have embarked upon together. They weave together the sublime, the difficult and the everyday moments that comprise a relationship.

They are interested in the frayed edges, the messy intersections, the elements of oneself lost and new facets gained in the process, and the limits to all of that.

A collaboration in the deepest sense of the word, When We Were Strangers is the first part of a lifelong project deconstructing love through the prism of Naughton and Sosa Iglesias’s relationship. Decisions about what to shoot — and how — are made jointly, and Sosa Iglesias sometimes takes the camera. They use timers and remotes, tripods and extended arms to take photos together.

This book, the first chapter of a lifelong project, is a love poem, one that explores what happens when two people attempt to become something more and less than themselves. It charts the beginnings of a relationship and everything that follows.