“Embracing a Shared Puerto Rican Identity”

**The Power of Recuerdos: Norma I. Quintana’s “Forget Me Not” and the Art of Shared Humanity**

Portraits have long been a medium through which we document our lives, expressing our memories, experiences, and connections through images. In Puerto Rico, these portraits were once fondly called *recuerdos* (a term meaning both “memories” and “souvenirs”), snapshots often captured by itinerant photographers known as *ambulantes*. Unlike scenic photos crafted to entice tourists or investors, these personal portraits were meant for family, friends, and distant loved ones—a heartfelt way to say, “I’m thinking of you.”

Inspired by this image-making tradition, contemporary photographer Norma I. Quintana has recently breathed new life into the concept of *recuerdos* with her ongoing photography series titled *Forget Me Not (No Me Olvides)*. Spanning nearly two decades from 2004 through the present, Quintana’s project offers a meditation on individuality, community, and shared humanity—values expressed through the powerful language of portraiture.

### The Journey from Lares to Napa Valley

Quintana’s relationship with *recuerdos* runs deep. Her parents migrated from the Puerto Rican mountain town of Lares to Cleveland, Ohio, but the spirit of their homeland remained alive in nostalgic moments. Quintana recalls her mother sending one such portrait to her father back in the mainland United States—a token of remembrance that now sits proudly in family photo albums. The enduring power of these images, not only as memories but also as symbols of enduring human connection, becomes the backbone of *Forget Me Not*.

In her current home of Napa Valley, Quintana has created nearly 100 portraits in the style of *recuerdos*, featuring subjects from all walks of life—ranging from circus performers and army veterans to a Kamala Harris supporter and even a Trump voter. The resulting series invites viewers to reflect and perhaps see something of themselves in these portraits, transforming the Puerto Rican *recuerdo* tradition into a meditation that goes beyond Latin American heritage. It is a mirror held up to our shared humanity.

### *Forget Me Not:* A Bridge Between Cultures and Communities

Quintana’s hope is that her photographs “connect people” across cultural and historical distances. “It’s my hope that viewers can see themselves in the photographs, and by doing so, make the Puerto Rican experience their experience,” she said in a recent interview. Her images dismantle distinctions of nationality, race, and background by focusing on what unites us more than what divides us.

This sentiment feels particularly urgent in the context of modern politics, especially when leaders dehumanize entire communities—immigrants, Puerto Ricans, and even marginalized groups like the trans community—in an effort to propagate harmful ideologies based on race and class hierarchies. Quintana’s project stands in firm opposition to such divisive narratives. Her images foster connections rooted in the common experiences that we all share, whether through isolation, migration, identity, or even disagreements on political ideology. Quintana’s lens seems to express that we are bound together more tightly than we think—none of us are as “other” as political rhetoric might suggest.

### The People Behind the Portraits

Each of Quintana’s subjects is posed against the backdrop of softly crashing waves, often dressed in their day-to-day attire while leaning on a hand-painted wooden stand. Still, the raw simplicity of these poses only amplifies the emotional weight of the images. Quintana finds her subjects on the streets of Napa or through word of mouth. But unlike the casual familiarity that usually accompanies asking someone to sit for a portrait, not all interactions are smooth. One character, an older Trump voter, met her request with suspicion and hesitation—a rare reaction, the photographer noted. Yet, the resulting photograph captures not discord, but connection through shared space and time.

What at first seems like a juxtaposition—a young Kamala Harris supporter and a Trump voter in the same series—actually illustrates the way art can transcend division. Quintana’s portraits ultimately function as documents of human complexity, bridging political, socioeconomic, and generational gaps. Though these individual standpoints represent division, their inclusion within a single body of work underlines the timeless impulse to document and relate across differences rather than remain separated.

### The Larger Message: Art as a Unifier

At a time when social discourse is marked by division, *Forget Me Not* offers an antidote. Through its simple yet profound imagery, the series reflects the unifying power of art by highlighting the delicate threads that connect us as a human community. Each portrait belongs to a long-standing artistic tradition that not only celebrates identity but also constructs and sustains relationships, even across great distances and time.

While Quintana’s work has reached hundreds of households in Napa Valley, its message is undoubtedly universal: regardless of political affiliation, background, or culture, we live in a