As Reynaldo Rivera’s intimate ‘blue’ images are published in a new photo book, he reflects on the chaos, drama and danger 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 talking to me over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. He tilts his camera so I can admire the cat which has just jumped all too briefly onto his lap. “Oh, she left again,” he laments. “They’re very elusive. Like love.”
His latest photo book, Propiedad Privada, published by Semiotext(e), is all about that hound from hell – love. Encompasing pictures from the 1980s to the present day, it brings together what he calls his “blue” works – the most candid and erotic images from his archive, many of which were never intended for public consumption: nude self portraits (with and without lovers), friends undressing, couples embracing, the prone figures of naked sleepers, shower scenes, close-ups of penetration. Augmented by incredible accompanying texts from Constance Debré, Chris Kraus, Brontez Purnell, Colm Tóibín and more, it’s a powerful reflection on the devastating potency of desire and new love.
“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 formed listening to records by the great 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 photography, which he was drawn to for its ability to “keep” people with him in some tangible form, 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 but 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 features recurring figures – friends and muses shot by Rivera many times over the years, often in the beginnings of their new loves. When he first conceived of this book, it was going to be called Ex, in reference to these 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 surely love is an act of faith and isn’t faith 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 may both be “loaded cigars”, but he’s not hopeless. Propiedad Privada is testimony to the ephemeral nature of desire, but he wouldn‘t change a thing if he could do it all again. “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 published by Semiotext(e) and is out now.
