Union Square, New York City, 2017 (2017) Photography by Diana Rivera

Diana Rivera is a photographer and illustrator who lives and works in New York City. Currently working with both digital and film, her work deals with expression, history, time, mood, and place – both the experience of the now and its dislocation. In her work Catharsis: She-Moon Diana documents performance artists in a rehearsal for a one night only circus-type show that deals with the agony of being different, and thus persecuted. Isolating the actor’s expressions from their performance creates a body of work that is haunting and resonant of the current zeitgeist. Descending from the documentary photography school of Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott, their influence could be seen in Diana’s seminal photo essay Ghost Waltz. With the use of slow shutter, she infuses a dreamy, disorienting element to her cityscapes in order to capture the dimension of time and the human element in it’s passing. Diana always considered photography as a third eye to another world beyond our vision, and therefore capable of creating art that is distinct from other artistic mediums but can stand equal in merit.

Her illustrative works establish a link between the genre's reality and that imagined by it's conceiver. The work is stylistic and emotional and a simple, yet vivid color scheme is used. As compared to the light, cutsey, stylistic drawings of contemporary illustrators, Diana's drawings are darker and never show the complete structure; omission plays a key role in their interpretation. Her illustrations doesn’t reference recognizable form.They are deconstructed and mutable to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. This results in the fact that the artist can easily imagine their own interpretation without being hindered by the historical reality, along with inviting the viewer to engage with the work itself.

Her studio is located in a 19th-century historic artists’ building overlooking New York City's Union Square Park, across the street from Andy Warhol’s legendary Factory (1974-1984).

• Nationality: UNITED STATES
• Date of birth : 1981
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary American Artists