Raafi Rivero is a filmmaker, photographer, etc. Click here for professional inquiries.
These missives have been posted at varying intervals since 2006 when “moblogging” was a thing. Please explore work and ideas here, elsewhere, or on the social platform of your choice:
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When people ask me where I’m from I’ve started saying “the Amtrak Northeast Regional.” And if that gets a laugh then I tag it with “Train 154.”
This Fall brought me to Newark, New Jersey, where I walked through Branch Brook Park nearly every day for a couple months during my fellowship at NJIT. Walking is the photographer’s secret weapon and so I moved and saw and snapped many times over.
This year I spent 6 months working on an 8-part docuseries about the NBA Playoffs that just released on ESPN and ESPN+. (Wrote a pretty extensive post about it over on social media). What I’ll say here on the personal dot-com is that it felt great one night a couple weeks ago to sit in my favorite bar and the bartender Jamie had it on the TVs. At one point he dimmed the lights and turned the sound up. People clapped afterwards when my credit popped onscreen. One of those bucket list type things.
Here’s a map of the places I went:
As for the first photo – it was taken back in June. The Cs had just won it all and there I was standing in the locker room as a guy brushed past me carrying the Larry O’B. That and a million other stories we’ll have to share over a beer sometime.
I’ve posted several pieces of writing about this film elsewhere covering the process, the namesake, its significance to Unarmed. There’s even a dedicated website with more details and behind-the-scenes photos. And there are a million things I’m proud of about it, most notably the film itself, the collaboration with Jon Lopez, and also the trailer, the design, the poster, the reception.
Maybe this kaleidoscope of images can paint in a few more details:
A few years ago I went to Morocco, my first trip to Africa. On my second flight to the Continent – a year ago – the man sitting a row in front of me said, “yeah, but that’s not really Africa.” The sentiment is so common that even I, a foreigner, shrugged when I said “Morocco” as if to confess the crime before even being accused. The flight was to Ghana. The trip was to Kokrobite, a town just west of the capital Accra, and the Kokrobitey Institute, run by Renée Neblett – Auntie Renée – an irrepressible woman with the charm of a million charmers and the style to match.
The heartbreaking story of Tyre Nichols had me clenched up all week. I wrote a more fulsome post about his life and what inspired the design elsewhere. Perhaps one day I’ll do some writing about the value skateboarding has had in my life. Tyre was an excellent skater.
