Alexandra Diez de Rivera is a Spanish artist based in London whose work explores themes of memory, psychology and the passage of time through photography. Using techniques that range from large-format film photography and light-painting to cameraless photography and AI generated images, she captures the energy of psychologically ambiguous objects and spaces marked by the passage of people and time. Her work delves into the emotional and historical weight of inanimate subjects - vacant interiors, antique garments, and forgotten artefacts - transforming them into introspective spaces that invite self-examination. Diez de Rivera’s work has been featured in publications such as Vanity Fair, FT Magazine, Vogue, and Le Point and exhibited in galleries both nationally and internationally. She is represented in collections in Europe, China, the US and UAE. Diez de Rivera’s work was selected for the 2023 edition of 'Small is Beautiful’ at Flowers Gallery, RWA Bristol’s ‘Photo Open 2023’, 'London Grads Now 21' at the Saatchi Gallery and 'After the High Tide' at Cromwell Place in London.
Diez de Rivera holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication and Graphic Design from Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London and a Master’s degree in Photography from the Royal College of Art. Prior to her Master's at the RCA, Diez de Rivera developed The Alternative Portrait Project
STATEMENT
‘A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space’ Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
My practice looks at the vacant space, the hollow shell, the skin of things. I am drawn to psychologically ambiguous objects and spaces that are empty but charged and marked by the passage of people and time. I work with large format film, cameraless photography, light painting and other creative techniques to seize the heart of my subjects, to capture their presence and aura.
I'm interested in memory, psychology, and the notion of the uncanny. My subjects have an intimate relationship to the body and have been handled and inhabited, they are inanimate but loaded, exposing the affecting remnants of past lives. Resonating Spaces depicts a series of locations which have been used and inhabited but are vacant in the photograph, allowing the viewer in; a confessional, a theatre box, a draped alcove with a bed in it. My photograms of children’s clothes are made without a camera, placing the antique garments directly on photo-sensitive paper and exposing them to light, the skin cells and body oils of their wearers seeping into the prints, becoming a part of them. My Vessels, dormant containers of rifles and pistols, crosses and medals, evoke hidden narratives and secret histories. The camera becomes an instrument for resurrecting archaic and obsolete objects, turning them into something new, allowing us to observe them and re-evaluate their cultural, political and sentimental meaning.
I want my stark and silent photographs to act as introspective spaces, mirrors for self-examination which trigger our deeper thoughts and feelings, fears and desires. My work deals with absence; when something is missing, we unwittingly fill in the gaps, occupying the space with our own lived experience and imagination, drawing from memories and emotions which may be hidden or suppressed. The space becomes a reflection of ourselves, a chance to examine our own minds and thoughts and perhaps experience some release.