Hi, my name is Leo.

I am a multimedia worker, street photographer, social practitioner, and video editor based in Brooklyn, NYC. Born in Uruguay and raised in Puerto Rico, I have lived in New York City since 2017, after several years in Boston.

In 2014, my first solo show was exhibited at Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion’s La Galeria. Titled Bullicios—or bustle in English—the exhibtion explored Boston's cultural and political life. One year later, I worked as a photographer-ethnographer, documenting “the listening phase of Boston Creates in photographs and creating a photographic portrait of Boston’s creative life” as part of the Boston Creates initiative. In 2016, I co-curated Shut it Down! a photo exhibition and conversation series about Black Lives Matter activism in Boston, but also curated Deconstruction of Joy which focused on the HONK! Festival. In 2018 I spent a summer walking Boston’s harbor, documenting how people used the waterfront. The work, commissioned by The Barr Foundation was titled Another Room in the House , and was exhibited at The Gallery at Atlantic Wharf in Boston.

As a multimedia worker, I covered the Haitian diaspora in New York City for The Haitian Times, a NYC-based online publication. At the Times, I was part of a team that reported on the 15,000 Haitians who arrived at the U.S. border in September 2021. Our stories focused on Haitian asylum seekers who were allowed to enter the U.S. via Del Rio, Texas. In addition, I spent a month in Tapachula, Mexico, reporting on the thousands of Haitians who had migrated from Chile and Brazil and were waiting there for transit documents to continue their journey north.

In New York City, my photography has focused on pursuing moments of quiet in the streets of NYC, a city often perceived as hectic and wild, as well as moments of tenderness that portray the city beyond traditional images of “craziness” and “grittiness” that, for some, have defined NYC since the 1980s.

I have worked as a social practitioner supporting people with mental health illnesses on their recovery journeys. As a supporter of the Clubhouse model for psychosocial rehabilitation, I am interested in the possibilities of media work for personal change.

Besides media work, I am also a Vipassana meditator, bilingual in English and Spanish, and am currently learning Italian.

Find me on Instagram:@mneyid
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