Reynaldo Rivera Is
His Own Leading Lady

Music is the bedrock of everything I’ve ever done. I bought a victrola from a second-hand shop when I was working up north as a teenager. I remember finding Bessy Smith and Billie Holiday. I was a rancho child, I had no idea who they were. All these great women. Edith Piaf. They were like tias, the women who helped raise me. Lucha Reyes, Toña la Negra. They taught me how to suffer, how to cry, how to fall in love. You didn't need an education or any classical training to understand music.

Yes, it took me months to learn it. At first, nothing would come out. I’d get my pictures back and they’d be blank. I continuously asked the employee where I got my film developed for advice. She took the time to explain the camera to me, and what it all meant.

It’s very important in silent movies, which was my entry into cinema. Photos were the second best thing to making movies. I’m always looking at the gradation of lighting. You start seeing everything as a set. Everything about photography was expensive, that's why it is such a rich kid's hobby. I didn't have the kind of money to keep buying rolls of film. This helped me learn how to edit, knowing I had a limited number of shots. We were buying milk with bags of pennies. We lived life without thinking of a future. If someone invited us to go somewhere, we'd quit our jobs and take off for three months or a year. There was never anything that could tie us down. We could just as easily get another shitty job. We did a lot of shoplifting [laughs]. I know I shouldn't say that! Can I still go to jail?

Film was hard to steal, they always kept it in the back. That's why I don't have thousands of photos. I've been doing this since '82. You would think I'd have so much more. Granted things got lost in fires over the years, and moving around.

That was always the intention, mija. From the beginning. Photography wasn't just a hobby for me. It really fulfilled a need. As necessary as eating, and all the other shit that comes with life. Also, I'm old. When you get to be a certain age you start thinking about longevity. The things you'll leave behind.

In my teens, 20s, 30s, everything was important. Everybody was my friend. I documented a huge range of people. Now that I'm older, everything has become more singular. I've developed this new interest in portraiture. Capturing the people in my life, and the new people I come across. If you were here I'd take your photo. I've learned that it's these momentary things that matter in the long run. Not the landmark events we give so much importance when we are young.

No! I remember one time I was like, "I wish I would've gotten to see Etta James before she died! How could I have not seen her?" And then one day I'm flipping through one of my old diaries and I see an entry written while waiting at the Hollywood Bowl with my friends Donald and Cindy, drinking wine, and we're listening to Etta James perform.

But some things are impossible to forget. I remember The Plaza, those shots of the girls backstage, taking mom to see their show. I thought I was showing her something new, and it turns out she already knew the place. She was old friends with this waiter who had always been an asshole to me. After that, he treated me like royalty! She helped him come out of the closet, even wrote a song about him. What I thought was unique to me was actually just this queer continuum.

All those places are gone now. People, too. That's what is hard. Our history got interrupted by AIDS. Imagine where we would be if we'd never lost all these wonderful people of the 80s and 90s. They just got snuffed. In those days it got you fast. If you got it, you were gone in a few months. It was fucking hell. I didn't get to see much of this, even though my second boyfriend died of AIDS. I don't know how I didn't get it. I'm like the black widow. I also wasn't sleeping with very many people, maybe it was my upbringing.

I was a bad girl with lots of fears [laughs]. I was also very sheltered. If you were gay it was kept a secret. I didn't even come out until '83, and AIDS had been going around for three years at that point. TV called it 'gay cancer', and I remember thinking I was gonna get it just for being gay! Have you ever read City of God? The one by the Chicano Writer, Gil Cuadros?
It's his story as a young gay Latino in the Southwest and how living here shapes your gender and sexual identification. It's a really important book for me. Luckily when I came to the U.S., I arrived with a strong mother and these militant Chicano sisters who were all about going against the white man, always screaming “fuck the honkies!” So I never grew up glamorizing or idolizing whiteness. Thank god for my Chicano Power sisters.

That was a fake fashion shoot we did for LA Weekly. A friend of mine was the fashion editor, and she told me to come up with something. She knew I could use the money. We called this look the "cha cha girls". I love how that photo says we aren’t guests. None of us are illegal here. We're native to this land.

Those women didn't need anything around them to make an interesting photo. It seems to me that any expression of femininity is always under scrutiny. These were places where they could be free from that. It was everything: the perfume, the mannerisms, the way they spoke. I wanted them to be the leading women of my movies.

I was always a ready girl. Every day was going out. My look was very important, especially once I came out. I shot out. I remember wearing a 1920s swimsuit with wedges. It was fun to put a look together and go out into the world. I figured I was already the worst thing you could be, a fag, so everything else was secondary. I didn't find out how wrong I was till much later. Pulling a feminine look did not get me any play in West Hollywood. No one would look at me, and I thought I was so cute giving high fashion. I was not trying to be a woman, I just wanted to feel glamorous.

We chose this selection of images for the book to tell a story of a people that really made use of this city. That's why we used all these party images. I wanted to portray fully formed people, with a range of emotions. It's a story I crave to see in any media, characters that are expressive and dirty. Like my cousin Tricia, who lived so much life. My sister, my grandmother. What made them amazing wasn't money or achievements. They took what they got, and turned it into a life.

My grandmother left behind an abusive husband and her young children to be an actress in 1920s Mexico City. I hated her as a child, her name was enough to make me shiver. As I got older I found the rest of her life to be so cool. She became a monster, but that's part of the story. A woman who grew up with her told me she was a hooker, which I already knew. She'd throw these legendary parties and invite all the men from the village. Then she'd charge them admission to come into her apartment and dance with them. I guess that's what we'd call a rent party today. My dad had to sleep in the hallway as she tended to her clients. She told them he was her brother. She wasn't a good human being. But her life is such an incredible story. Overcoming poverty, abuse, and public ridicule as a single woman.

When you're a sensitive bitch like me, it's hard. There's always a sense of loss. You can never go back. You can never go home. It's a sad thing. I don't feel this as intensely now, time and distance do a lot. I don't let myself go there. Like, right now, I had to hold myself back from going to that place.

Most of the people in that book were intimate friends of mine, or of each other. I was never a voyeur in any of these scenarios. The audience can feel like they're there because I was there. I was part of the environment. I was capturing moments I was included in. You can feel it in the work. You can put me in any of these photos. I mean I am in that photo, you just don't see me.

You know what, I see myself in there too.