People nominee

These cinematic portraits are photomontages from a project I’ve been working on since 2008, "The Alternative Portrait Project". It’s the first time I enter them for a competition. They are real, commissioned, family portraits from around Europe.

I come up with a different concept for each family, after getting a feel for their personality and lifestyle, and try to find the common ground between us; The place where their sense of humour and mine meet. I like working with real people, as opposed to models, and once we are on the same page I know I can art direct them and get them to look authentic for our chosen story. I appreciate the fact a lot of what we are doing is genuine and try not to interfere too much with the styling and set design.

Family life is messy and complicated but sometimes, amongst the chaos, there’s a magic moment of harmony and balance which makes everything else worthwhile. It is this moment I am interested in and leaving the families who commission me with a picture they can smile at which reminds them there's a method to their madness and their family rocks.

Alexandra Diez de Rivera is a Spanish-Argentine visual artist based in London working with photography. Her work deals with absence and psychologically ambiguous objects and spaces that are empty but charged.

Diez de Rivera’s work has been featured in publications such as Vanity Fair, FT Magazine, Shanghai Daily, and Le Point and exhibited in galleries both nationally and internationally. She is represented in private collections in Europe, China, the US and UAE. Diez de Rivera was selected for 'London Grads Now 21' at the Saatchi Gallery, The Travers Smith CSR Art Programme 2021/ 2022 and The Pupil Sphere Showcase 2021. She was a finalist of the 2020 Critical Mass Competition and was invited to join the ‘Fair Art Fair’ community in June 2021. Diez de Rivera holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication and Graphic Design from Central Saint Martins University and a Master’s degree in Photography from the Royal College of Art.

Exhibitions include, 'After the High Tide' at Cromwell Place and 'London Grads Now 21' at the Saatchi Gallery in London.