Eduardo L. Rivera

Issue 172

Mohave (2010 - Ongoing)

“For over a decade, I have made images with my family and community to contemplate the personal histories that ripple through my childhood home a few hours north of the U.S.-Mexico border. In thinking about my family’s history, my personal history, and our connection to this ever-changing desert landscape, I’m looking for ways to consider the present through images and stories of the past to add something visually evocative to the dialog of the American Southwest. I think about the medium of photography as a conduit that functions between memory and speculation and consider time, belonging, and the significance of light as threads woven throughout the fabric of my work.”

Eduardo L. Rivera has been photographing his family for ten years; even as a photography instructor in Rochester NY, his primary practice is an extended documentary engagement with his hometown of Phoenix AZ and the multigenerational representation of his extended family. Even as his longitudinal project continues to move forwards, he situates new pictures with archival family photographs, creating a conduit between memory, time, place, and belonging. This creates a complete, loving world in which past and present coexist. His observational photography of Arizona reinforces his own sense of connection to place. In thinking about his own family’s history as expressed through the family archive, and exploring this in relation to his own contemporary interpretations of portraiture, still-life and landscape traditions, Rivera brings his deeply personal way of seeing photographically to the visual discourse of the American Southwest.

Eduardo L. Rivera currently lives and works in Providence, RI.
eduardolrivera.com | @eduardolrivera_