Lissa Rivera on Gender, Identity, and the Beautiful Boy Series

Lissa Rivera, born 1984, is a photographer and curator based in New York. Her series Beautiful Boy, which won the 2017 Magnum Photography Award in the Portrait category, explores gender identity through intimate photographs of her partner BJ Lillies. The project began when Rivera and Lillies met while working at the Museum of the City of New York and discovered their shared non-binary identities. The series, inspired by 1920s Hollywood glamour and 1950s vintage, presents BJ as a retro diva, blurring masculine and feminine boundaries. Rivera's work challenges mainstream gender stereotypes by using classical aesthetic forms to depict genderqueer reality. She is currently working on The Silence of Spaces, a project on identity and religion, to be exhibited in July at ClampArt in New York. Rivera cites influences including Kenneth Anger's Puce Moment (1949), Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975), and Leonor Fini's 1942 Nude Portrait. She believes digital communication has expanded sexual and gender expression but warns against the pressure of social media approval. Rivera states, 'I am for freedom' and sees art as capable of constructing reality.