NinaJohnson

Reynaldo Rivera was born in 1964 in Mexicali, Mexico. He grew up traveling throughout Mexico and the US—mostly between San Diego de la Unión, Mexico, Los Angeles, and Stockton, California. His large (and largely unseen) body of work captures queer clubs in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s as well as house party scenes. Part of Rivera’s project, as he digs through his archive, is remembering and lending visibility to a whole community of vibrant trans women and drag performers who often died young. The project is also a representation of a Los Angeles that has all but disappeared: Echo Park as a predominantly Latinx neighborhood rife with artists, writers, and performers full of flare and queer glamour, reminding us that L.A. is a place with a deep history and a short memory. Rivera has been immersed in a community of interdisciplinary practitioners: In 1996 he was one of two photographers at the Chance Event, a sprawling three-day festival at Whiskey Pete’s Casino in the Nevada desert conceived and produced by Chris Kraus, which also included DJ Spooky, Sandy Stone, Jean Baudrillard, Butoh dancers, and a Wall Street trader. Rivera has exhibited his work at Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles (2019), and has been published in Granta. In 2020 Semiotext(e) published a monograph of his work, Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City.