Shot across Italy, Japan, Hawaii, India and more, Pia Riverola’s new book Días brings together images shot around the world over the past six years
Looking at Pia Riverola’s work, it makes sense that the Spanish photographer wanted to become a flight attendant when she was little – an unshakable urge to travel has clearly never left her. Published by Loose Joints, her sophomore book Días brings together images shot around the world over the past six years, which are sensitively sequenced to mimic the passing of a day. Effortless and gestural, the book is a flurry of dappled light and natural moments shared between people, jolting memories of holidays while paying tribute to the cultures and places that have shaped her.
Released in 2022, the image-maker’s first book was a devotional document of Mexico City, a place Riverola relocated to in her early twenties, escaping a complicated family life in her hometown of Barcelona. Collaging a decade of gorgeous off-the-cuff shots of the city’s various characters, bustling markets, nature and architecture, it captures a time of personal growth in the place where the self-taught photographer first found her feet as an artist. She aptly titled it Flechazo, which translates to ‘love at first sight’.
“My first book focused on a very specific period of my life, a move to Mexico at a young age,” says Riverola, who now lives in LA but still visits Mexico City roughly once a month. “In a way, it was a journey of self-discovery and an ode to the country that allowed me to grow for some very important years of my life. Días is a more accurate representation of my present time, a body of work that introduces many different subjects and themes into it and feels complete. A journey of memories, the moments that I treasure the most.”
In the years since relocating to Mexico, Riverola has grown a diverse body of work that straddles fashion, still life, landscape and architectural photography. She has shot for Vogue and Loewe, travelled to the iconoclastic Copacabana Palace in Rio, and visited the chic modernist home of Enrique Olvera for Apartamento. The title of a recent exhibition focussing on images shot in Japan at Homecoming Gallery, Yūgen, perfectly sums up the stirring effect of her work. The word refers to an aesthetic ideal in Buddhist teachings, whereby a deeper beauty beyond what we see is implied through glimpses or fragments.
In Días, a tapestry of these glimpses blur together, taking the viewer on a journey that strikes sentimental notes of joy and introspection. A soft breeze blows through lace curtains in the Mediterranean; plastic tables and chairs set the scene for lunch in Laos; and the silhouette of a couple on a motorbike speeds off into a burning Hawaiian sunset. “I often find myself observing routines and quotidian moments,“ says the photographer. “Gestures, a sunset, objects placed in certain places, the remains after a long lunch, common errands. Moments that seem to have a lack of importance but are how our days go by. They give me a sense of routine when I don’t really have one, and they make me feel at home.”
Días mixes imagery from trips with friends and work assignments in Italy, Japan, Laos, and Hawaii, with solo expeditions to places like Bhutan, India, the Galapagos Islands and Antarctica – a voyage that was particularly special to the photographer. “All the images from the Antarctica journey feel very personal,” she says. “Being there allowed me to explore my work in a different way as [the landscape is] untouched by humans, very pure and raw. It’s a place that I knew I would most likely not return to, so it allowed me to be very present and realise the greatness of nature.”
Printed in a weighty cloth quarter-bound hardcover, across which watercolour-esque flowers blur into inky darkness, the book is an object to be treasured and a portal to escape into when days are bleak. It launches alongside two large-scale prints and an exhibition at CCProjects in New York, opening on September 5. “Travel continues to make me appreciate every human connection, every moment and how grateful I am to be able to know different cultures and continue to learn from them,” says Riverola. “I hope it tells a different story to everyone, that it feels personal to them, or that they can relate in some way.”
Días by Pia Riverola is published by Loose Joints, and is out now.
