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Lissa Rivera
"Beautiful Boy"

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Toni Pepe, Untitled, 2014

Artist Statement
"Beautiful Boy" is an ongoing project focusing on my domestic partner as muse, documenting our exploration of femininity and the nuances of photography as a transformative medium. I am using photography as a testing ground for my partner, who is genderqueer, to visualize multiple feminine identities. The photographs provide a canvas to investigate the visual language of womanhood that I was raised with, and that my partner is only beginning to explore. Through watching movies, listening to music and viewing countless photographs, I've absorbed an archive of techniques to share. The photographs recall childhood fantasies of dressing up, tapping into deep-seated narratives about desire, beauty, freedom and cultural taboo. Although our emotional relationship is private and real, we perform a romanticism that is obsessive and decadent. The fantasy of dressing up transforms the experience of being photographed into one that fuses identity-creation with image-creation.

Artist Bio
Lissa Rivera is a photographer living and working in the New York City area. Rivera received her BFA from Lesley University and MFA at the School of Visual Arts. She grew up near Rochester, NY, home of Eastman Kodak, where the Eastman House collection has continuously inspired her work. Her photography has been featured in several publications, including "25 Under 25 Up-and-Coming American Photographers" (PowerHouse Books), curated by Silvia Plachy. Rivera's photographs are included in the collections at the Danforth Museum of Art. She was chosen as a "Woman to Watch" for the biennial exhibition at the National Museum of Woman in Arts and included in the Humble Arts Foundation's Collector's Guide to Emerging Art Photography. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Rivera was first recognized for her extensive project documenting interiors of educational institutions ranging from public high schools and boarding schools to private fraternity and sorority houses. Since graduating SVA and working professionally in collections at The Burns Archive and The Museum of the City of New York, Rivera has been fascinated with the social history of photography and the evolution of identity in relationship to photographic technologies. Beautiful Boy, Rivera's latest project, takes her interest in photography's connection with identity to a personal level, focusing on her domestic partner as muse.