Beautiful Boy
By Lissa Rivera
From Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier (Penguin 2006):
Just imagine not being able to grow by a single particle, a single atom. Unable to make the blood of others flow in your veins. Seeing always with your own eyes, neither more clearly, nor farther, nor differently. Hearing sounds with the same ears and the same emotion. Touching with the same old fingers. Perceiving a variety of things with an organ that is invariable. Being condemned to the same tone of voice, always the same accents, the same phrases and the same words, and not be able to go away, to hide from yourself, or escape to some place where you cannot be followed; forced to put up with yourself for ever, to dine and sleep with yourself, to be the same man for twenty new women, to drag around an obligatory person in the midst of the strangest episodes of your life’s drama, when you know your role by heart; to think the same things, to have the same dreams, what torture, what boredom!
Lissa Rivera is a photographer based in Brooklyn, NY whose work has received multiple grants and honors and been exhibited internationally. She grew up near Rochester, New York, home of Eastman Kodak, where as a child she was exposed to the treasures at the Eastman Museum. After receiving her MFA from The School of Visual Arts, Rivera worked professionally in collections, including the Museum of the City of New York, where she became 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. Lissa is represented by ClampArt in New York. Visit her website here and follow her on Instagram.
Current and upcoming exhibitions:
Non-Binary
Centre Never Apart (Montreal)
October 5, 2016 – January 14, 2017
The Photo Review 2016
Gallery 1401, Philadelphia University of the Arts
November 4 – December 7, 2016
Portraits 2017
The Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO)
January 14, 2017 – February 25, 2017