In Conversation with Reynaldo Rivera

Reynaldo Rivera’s work has immortalized the colorful figures circling through his orbit since the early 1980s, when he first began using his camera to record their dreams and desires. His photography refutes the medium’s specious objectivity, reflecting the atmosphere of the surrounding environment by making use of available light—both natural and artificial—as well as shadow.

Rivera’s first solo museum exhibition, Fistful of Love/También la belleza, includes never-before-seen photographs from the artist’s archive, alongside a film newly edited from Hi8 footage. His photographs—which are included in MoMA’s collection—are informed by the drama and deep emotion of boleros and rancheras, the glamor of Old Hollywood and the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, and earlier trailblazers in photography like Nadar, Brassaï and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Rivera joined guest curator Lauren Mackler and MoMA PS1 assistant curator Kari Rittenbach to discuss the exhibition, revealing the stories behind some of his subjects (often friends or lovers), what it means to publicly exhibit his very personal “blue” series, and the experience of looking back on the past three decades of his work.

Read the full conversation at the link below.