If you took a photo to represent this moment in your life, what would it look like? That’s the question photographer Marcos Rivera seeks to answer in Narratives, a series of portraits featuring locals posed with objects that channel their current emotional state. There’s the recent UNLV arts program grad in “Emerging Talent,” kneeling on the ground surrounded by a haphazard collection of sewing materials, paintbrushes and clothes, her future just as chaotic and unorganized as her physical setting. Or the shoulder-slumped woman in “Untitled #1,” sheet music spread out around her and a few bottles of indeterminate booze on the floor. “She wanted to be a musician and had this mother who was an alcoholic,” Rivera explains. “She’s struggling, and she works at a hardware store.”

As much as the images channel the lives and feelings of those pictured, they also represent the photographer’s life—a former musician, turned digital marketer, turned photographer, who moved from New York to Las Vegas a few years back. “Five years ago, if I had been my own subject in this portrait series, it would look nothing like it does right now.” Rivera says. “[It] really reflects the uncertainty of my own life. I have no idea where I’m going.”