LIT ANGELS PRESENTS: LOVE, OBSERVED Photos by Pablo Prietto

PINK SKY PARENTS, Orange County, married 68 years, by Pablo Prietto

I met the talented, funny, charming and classically chiseled (though he denies it; he’s so modest!) Pablo Prietto in 1981 at UC Berkeley and he chronicled my friends and me living our college days—black and white portraits of Lisa with her bleached Mohawk and nose piercing posing behind chain link; Brian the laconic curly blond who would later be her husband; my roommate Marjo, the tall, thin preppy whirlwind; Marjo’s boyfriend at the time, even taller and goofier Eric, who fit the mold of a classic, all-American surfer; Isaac and Dale, curly-haired friends who looked and spoke so much alike they could have been related; and me always looking off to the side wearing some new wave ensemble or with cropped bleached hair posing on white lace. Pablo also took dreamy pictures of his many siblings, including his five sisters like a line of nesting dolls with that same movie star smile and those starry eyes inherited from their mother. Later, as you will see in this issue of Lit Angels, Pablo photographed his siblings with their spouses and later still their children and their children’s spouses and children—the daughters still carrying on the lineage of their grandmother’s celestial face. Portraits of Pablo’s handsome blonde and always impeccably dressed husband Jon, a fantastic visual artist in his own right, and their adorable son Felix, arriving at LAX, having a bath, meeting a cousin for the first time, are another important part of the artist’s work. And in this issue of Lit Angels Pablo also shows us photos of other couples, including his magical parents who have been married 68 years this month, to demonstrate this month’s theme of love. You will get a glimpse into that theme through the lens of Pablo’s personal Mexican-American and Peruvian heritage with these sensitive portraits, mostly set in our beloved and recently devastated Southern California. —Francesca Lia Block

FRANCESCA & TROY KISS, Newport Beach, by Pablo Prietto