As Reynaldo Rivera’s intimate ‘blue’ photographs are printed in a brand new photograph ebook, he displays on the chaos, drama and hazard of new love
“Love is not for sissies,” Reynaldo Rivera warns me. “Oh my god, love has almost killed me more than once but I would do it again. That’s the tragedy of it all.” The Mexican-born photographer is speaking to me over Zoom from his house in Los Angeles. He tilts his digicam so I can admire the cat which has simply jumped all too briefly onto his lap. “Oh, she left again,” he laments. “They’re very elusive. Like love.”
His newest photograph ebook, Propiedad Privada, printed by Semiotext(e), is all about that hound from hell – love. Encompasing footage from the Eighties to the current day, it brings collectively what he calls his “blue” works – probably the most candid and erotic photographs from his archive, lots of which had been by no means meant for public consumption: nude self portraits (with and with out lovers), associates undressing, {couples} embracing, the inclined figures of bare sleepers, bathe scenes, close-ups of penetration. Augmented by unimaginable accompanying texts from Constance Debré, Chris Kraus, Brontez Purnell, Colm Tóibín and extra, it’s a robust reflection on the devastating efficiency of want and new love.
9Propiedad Privada by Reynaldo Rivera
“Most of that stuff was really meant for me,” he says. “That’s the reason the title of the book is Private Property. It’s also the title of a song by Lucha Reyes, one of my favourite singers … ‘Que no se atreva nadie a mirarte con ansias, porque mi pobre alma se retuerce de celos’ (‘Let no one dare to look at you with desire, because my poor soul twists with jealousy’).”
Rivera’s melodramatic romantic philosophy was shaped listening to data by the nice Hispanic torch singers. “That’s how I learned about love, listening to those ladies sing. Mexican women, or whoever writes these songs, we suffer differently than American women,” he tells me. As with pictures, which he was drawn to for its means to “keep” folks with him in some tangible type, love is a matter of possession. “The lyrics are always like: I love you so you can do anything to me as my man. You can hit me with your car, steal my money, whatever. It’s all good. But don’t go out on me, motherfucker, that is the one fucking line in the sand I will not cross.”
Romantic love is to be revered however feared. “You can’t talk about love without talking about the breakups and the psycho boyfriends. I came from a very dysfunctional background but there was a moment I really believed that love was going to be the saviour. And it never occurred to me that in love you could get stabbed, slashed and killed; that so many people die in love.”
Propiedad Privada options recurring figures – associates and muses shot by Rivera many instances through the years, typically within the beginnings of their new loves. When he first conceived of this ebook, it was going to be known as Ex, in reference to those sequences of expired loves. “I’ve photographed friends throughout my life, with boyfriend one, boyfriend two, boyfriend three. Each time, they have that same dumb look of love, like ‘This is the real thing. This is the one.’ It’s amazing how you’re in love for such a short moment and then you’re just in hope for the rest of it.”
But certainly love is an act of religion and isn’t religion a species of hope? “Faith is a different take on hope. Hope is really something specific,” he explains. “Hope is the thing that keeps you in the shitty job because you’re hoping that you’re gonna get a raise. You’re hoping your man won’t go out on you. You’re hoping, hope, hope, hope, hope. Poor folk live on hope; we grow up in hope, so it comes naturally to hope for everything. But the minute you have to hope for something, it’s already a problem. Especially in a love affair, by the time the hope starts, it’s already over … We’re slouching towards the end, wounded from all that love.”
For Rivera, love and hope could each be “loaded cigars”, however he’s not hopeless. Propiedad Privada is testimony to the ephemeral nature of want, however he wouldn‘t change a factor if he might do all of it once more. “A love affair is such an amazing thing to go through. There’s a moment of bliss when you’re having sex and, for real, you see stars. When you come, it’s like you’re on another planet; it’s like heroin. That’s what keeps us going round in circles, because we want to be in love. Love is the high; hope is the drug.”
Propiedad Privada by Reynaldo Rivera is printed by Semiotext(e) and is out now.