We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Peter Riva a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Peter, appreciate you joining us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

When I left education, I realized that excellence is about setting standards for oneself and always aiming for a level of achievement previously never attained. I had a teacher – at a very tough school – who always said “Think of a 10, hope for an 8, and get a 6.” The point is, do not try to succeed, try to excel, to surpass expectations.
I have been fortunate enough to reach the vanguard of achievement five times in my long-ish career. Each time the end goal was thought unachievable by many experts. Each time I knew the lasting legacy — not for me personally! — would be valuable to others, to those who contributed.
Will anyone remember my contribution? That’s hardly relevant on a public scale, but yes, some will remember. What is most important is that these events have helped improve knowledge, endeavor, and achievement for future generations.

Peter, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Born in 1950, I grew up in the post-war period of “anything is possible, everything can be new, renewed, invented, dreamed up.” Heady times.
I went to one of the finest boarding, learning institutions in Switzerland with 65 nationalities, coming to grips of what it means for us all to be, simply, human. The same. Unique but never different.
After being a math major attending Carnegie-Mellon, then UCLA as a film/TV student, and ending up as an apprentice at the BBC working on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I then learned from my father how to license – toys initially working with him and later global projects, books, films, TV and so on. I traveled at least 6 months a year for 20 years, city to city, country to country. Thereafter for the next 20 years reducing that to 3 months a year. As a licensor of authors’, creators’ projects, the responsibility was always to find a platform for their genius, allow their words and ideas to come to fruition. I also created and produced prime-time TV specials as well as a series of wildlife programs (78 1 hour episodes). I uncovered, curated, and helped re-write access to NASA’s archive of astronauts’ images taken in space. I helped fund, project manage, and nurture the first ever non-stop circumnavigation in atmospheric flight in ’86 and then helped hang the plane, The Voyager, in the National Air & Space Museum’s “Milestones of Flight” gallery in DC. In 1990 I co-negotiated the first global environmental treaty between the USSR and the USA for the United Nations, witnessed by 40 astronauts and cosmonauts with a live transmission from orbit into the General Assembly at UK HQ.
For every project I worked on, my role was to project manage the concepts — sometimes my own, often others’ — accepting only a measure of success as the successful outcome. Failure happens, the goal doesn’t change. You simply start over until you are successful.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Life has to be about exploration. New ideas, new ventures, new possibilities. Repeating, duplication anything does not advance one’s own sense of worth.
In school, in the 50’s we learned that dinosaurs were green skinned, slimy creatures lumbering across the landscape. Then someone discovered air bubbles in prehistoric amber and found that, back then, there was 16% more oxygen in the air. Dinosaurs’ physiology was recalculated and T-Rex could run 30 mph all day. Then a few years ago, they found dinosaurs in China that had 3 foot feathers atop their heads and DNA showed they were multi colored… The point here is that school learning is about the basics that will always change, always be improved upon.
You go to school to learn how to learn, not to imprint fixed ideas to falsely believe are permanent facts. A stopped watch is perfectly right twice a day, but useless. You always need to recheck the time, update your sense of time, of what’s true.
Once you discover that life is one long series of explorations, then your desire becomes fixated on projects that interest you, push your knowledge, inspire the desire to explore, to know, to learn. Then, and only then, can you find the energy to undertake the workload to make projects successful.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In 1983 I met Ansel Adams, the great photographer. He explained the basics of form and emotion in photography to me and patiently allowed my questioning. I told him that I was fascinated in space exploration but that there was no human emotion in any image I had seen taken by astronauts, yet when they spoke of their time in orbit or on the moon, they were fiercely passionate. He agreed, it didn’t match the blandness, lack of form and emotion, in the images they took. He encouraged me to try and find out why.
Many phone calls later, I persisted until the Nikon rep Ansel introduced me to, put me onto the director of optics at NASA JSC who agreed to let me visit Houston to talk over the issue.
There I found that for every mission a camera was included as a measurement tool, not for snapshots. And a shooting script was made by every department — and a roll of film provided for that measurement role — for every stage of the mission. Once the principle photographic assignment off the shooting script was completed, there might be 20 frames left on a roll. The astronauts then used those spare frames for their own images, their sightseeing images.
When the film came back from orbit it was developed and edited by a technician who used the script to determine which images to “print” (make a copy of). The rest of the rolls of film were put into Building 2, frozen at 16 degrees. Never to be seen.
I networked my way to Congress, got a response from Sen. Kennedy through a family connection, and got permission to review all the handheld photography at NASA. We found 175,000 images that had never been shared with the astronauts or public.
An exhibit curated by Barbara Hitchcock of Polaroid followed, two identical exhibits (one tours in Europe, and one tours via NASA) were made, opening at the National Air & Space Museum in DC in 1985, along with a book from Alfred A. Knoph, NY. Arthur C. Clarke was kind enough to write the foreword.
And the difference this Sightseeing Project made? Seeing images — human form and emotion — reflecting their passion for space exploration, has changed public appreciation and desire for space travel. And, yes, our program changed NASA’s method of public access to all the images taken in space.
Once final point: When the flight footage on the moon was printed 30 x 30 inches, the clarity of the lunar no-atmosphere light shows an image that cannot be taken on Earth – at 500 feet, the stitching in spacesuits and every fleck of dust is clear, perfectly clear.

Contact Info:

• Website: intltrans.com; peterriva.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peterriva_author/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peter.riva
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterriva/
• Other: bsky.app @peterriva-author.bsky.social

Image Credits

PR + Peter Beard, Arles 1985 – Copyright Mark Greenberg
PR + Family, Mojave 1986 – Copyright Mark Greenberg
PR +President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Dick & Burt Rutan, Jeana Yeager – no copyright, WH photographic Collection
PR on top of car, Peugeot commercial 1989 – Copyright Mark Greenberg
Space image – no copyright (by law)
PR press interview Smithsonian Institution, press release Smithsonian
Glavcosmos-Still Mir “Only One Earth” UN HQ Transmission