The couple began traveling to Yucatán 28 years ago as tourists surveying the ruins of the Mayan civilizations, but they fell in love with the people, the culture and the light of the Caribbean-bathed peninsula. Now they travel there half a dozen times a year.

''The women come out of their houses in the afternoon freshly groomed and smelling of talcum powder,'' Gómez recalls. 'Mothers call out to their children playing outside `Niños, para el baño!' (''Children, bath time!'') just like our mothers did in Cuba. There was something so familiar to us, but at the same time there was something else we so intensely wanted to study.''

Miami was the natural launching point for their Yucatán work, and the couple moved back from New York in 1983. They bought their two-story Little Havana house in 1991, making an offer immediately after seeing from the master bedroom's window the downtown skyline floating in the distance, like a mirage.

The house was originally built for an eye surgeon. The heralded Cuban abstract painter Carlos Alfonzo lived here before he died of AIDS in 1991.

''Across the street,'' del Valle says, pointing north, ``lived the man who gave Popeye his voice.''

And not far from this corner is the ceiba tree Cubans believe to be sacred and where the celebrated artist Ana Mendieta staged a memorable performance and installation of Santeria artifacts.

Del Valle and Gómez have lovingly renovated and personalized the house. They've added artful touches -- an antique black Remington typewriter sits on an old iron Singer stand with a glass top -- and their photographs serve as focus points in the main living and dining areas. The gardens are lush, brimming with tropical palms, and, here and there, one meets the roaming eyes of their gray-and-white cat Dzibilchaltun, named for an ancient Mayan city but called ``Dizzy.''

Although several Cuban artists also have settled in this neighborhood between Calle Ocho and Coral Way where chickens roam front lawns and Cuban flags flutter on monuments to anti-Castro fighters, few residents know about the international reach and recognition of their neighbors' art.

''When they re-hung The Edward Steichen Galleries at MoMA, they were the only photographers carried over and hung in the new galleries,'' says Tina Spiro, director of Chelsea Galleria. ``That was a real honor, one of those quiet little things that happen that really mean something. But not many people know because Ed and Mirta are understated, modest and genuine.''

The person who championed their work from early on at MoMA was the late John Szarkowski, the museum's director photography from 1963 to 1992.

''It's beautifully made color photography and an achievement of enormous richness,'' Szarkowski wrote of the photographs of rural Mayan structures in From the Ground Up, the first monograph of their work. ``Eduardo del Valle and Mirta Gómez have followed one thread with great tenacity. I don't know of any other body of work quite like it.''

Del Valle and Gómez are now photographing -- or as they call it ''placing ourselves'' -- at the location of ''the original ground zero,'' Chicxulub, the crater on the northern coast of Yucatán where an asteroid is believed to have landed some 65 million years ago, helping end the age of the dinosaurs and paving the way for mankind.

''We want to end our work in Yucatán,'' Gómez says, ``at the place where life begins.''

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