Leopoldo Bloom
http://www.leopoldobloom.org |www.migratoryqueers.com |migratoryqueers@gmail.com
Recent Work
The Migratory Patterns of North American Queers at the Turn of the Century A reimagined queer take on the photo album format. This project uses the “physical book” format as a medium for community engagement and auto-ethnographic data collection. Instead of providing pages of photo narrative templates based on documenting births and marriages Migratory Queers … will provide readers with a hybrid workbook and photo album format to record their personal experiences and migration narratives.
2013 How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day. A limited-edition artist book of 163 copies, was printed using handset type and a letterpress platen press. How to … is made up of thirty-one unbound postcards and seven pieces of ephemera housed in a metal film can. It is a memoir with a non-linear narrative that unfolds through un-mailed postcards from the author to his Italian immigrant mother.
2017-2023 #BIOGRAPHY of COMPLAINT Who has civil rights and how are they enforced? If you were barred from returning to school or blocked from accessing health care, what would you do? Who would be safe to tell? Would you have the ability to file a complaint by yourself or is there already an organization or resources prebuilt to assist you? How would you come up with the words to describe what happened to you? What if you are unable to recognize your story in print? In this participatory performance project, I am outfitted as a benevolent civil servant, equipped with stacks of paper forms and willing to serve as a scribe for members of the public needing assistance with channeling and comprehending their complaints.
Selected Exhibitions of How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day
2025, October. Don’t Look Now: A Defense of Free Expression. 127 Elizabeth Street, NYC
2025, June. $3 Bill: Evidence of Queer Lives. Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
2022, July. A to Zine. Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Bainbridge Island, WA.
2019, July. Center for the Book Member’s Showcase. NYC, NY.
2016, January. Backstory: College Book Arts Conference. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.
2015, August. The Last Word: Our Favorite Colophons’ at Wimberly Library. Florida Atlantic University, Bocca Raton, FL.
2015, September. Creative Codex: Books as Art in the Havighurst Special Collections. Miami University, Oxford, OH.
Selected Institutional Collections of How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day
Bard College, Stevenson Library, Annadale on the Hudson, NY.
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library), Munich, Germany.
Brown University, Providence, RI.
Duke University, Durham, NC.
Florida Atlantic University, S.E. Wimberly Library, Boca Raton, FL.
Harvard Fine Arts Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
New York Public Library, Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photography.
University of California, Santa Barbara, Davidson Library, Santa Barbara, CA.
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.
University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, WA.
Selected Publications featuring How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day
Javier Samper Vendrell and Vance Byrd. (2025). Queer Print Culture: Resistance, Subversion, and Community. Studies in Book and Print Culture Series of the University of Toronto Press.
Miriam Intrator. (2022). Collecting Queerly: Acquiring and Describing Queer Print Culture for a Rare Book Collection.
Suzy Taraba. (2018). A Queer Community of Books. Marshall Weber. Freedom of the Presses: Artists’ Books in the Twenty-First Century, (94-95). Booklyn.
Recent Performances of #BIOGRAPHY of COMPLAINT
2025, February. The Sirens Are Calling – Project 2025. Grace Exhibition Space, NYC, NY.
2022 September. Art in Odd Places. NYC, NY.
2019 May. ITINERANT annual Performance Art Festival NYC. Smack Mellon. Brooklyn, NY.
2018 November. Performance Forum: Civic Reflex. Panoply Performance Laboratory. Brooklyn. NY.
Filmography
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoObaWb9w1F0UbUTXDX-9a_jKffrRVOq
2012 June 35mm color, hand processed. silent, 7 minutes.
2011- 1999 The Big Film Series. A collection of seven 35mm hand-processed film portraits, shot and projected using an early motion picture hand-cranked camera and projector.
2003 Tableaux Vivant. Film Installation. 2,000 square feet, 4 – 16mm film projectors, and film loops.
2001 The Portland Movie. 16mm color, silent, 8 minutes.
1998 August 1997, Greenpoint, NY. 1998. 16 mm B&W, hand processed, silent, 8 minutes.
1997 Grieg Farm, Red Hook, NY. 1997. 16 mm B&W, hand processed, silent, 9 minutes.
Selected Solo Film Exhibitions
2025, November. Filmmakers Coop. NYC, NY.
2023, May. Reassemblage Collective. Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center. Toronto, ON.
2003, June. Chicago Filmmakers. Chicago, Illinois.
2002, February. San Francisco Cinematheque. San Francisco, California.
2000, September. The Whitney Museum of American Art. NY, NY.
Artist Residences
2006 Filmmakers in the Schools Artist in Residence, Northwest Film Center. PTL, OR.
2004 Artist in Residence at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, Canada.
Project & Professional Development Grants
2016 Arizona State University Graduate Student Enrichment Grant, Phoenix, AZ.
2015 Arizona State University Graduate Student Enrichment Grant, Phoenix, AZ.
2013 Regional Arts Cultural Council Project Grant, PTL, OR.
2013 Puffin Foundation Grant, Teaneck, NJ.
2012 Regional Arts Council Professional Development Grant. PTL, OR.
2004 Experimental Television Center Finishing Fund. NY.
2004 Regional Arts Council Professional Development Grant. PTL, OR.
2003 Canada Council of the Arts International Artist in Residence Fellowship. Toronto, Ontario.
Motion Picture Film and Archival Experience
Shelby White and Leon Levy Motion Picture Archivist, Wildlife Conservation Society 2300 Southern Blvd Bronx, NY 10460. June 14, 2022 to January 30, 2024.
- Working with light tables and hand-powered rewinds I inspected, processed, rehoused, and cataloged over 1,200 reels of 16mm and 35mm historical wildlife and zoo motion picture films: https://library.wcs.org/en-us/Archives/Digital-Collections/WCS-Film-Collection.aspx
- Identified reels that meet the criteria for digitization. Inspected and compared multiple copies of projection prints, master positives, or duplicate negatives to determine the highest quality image and soundtrack elements for over 180 films.
- Planned, applied, and executed two collection-wide grant-funded preservation projects. 1- Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources. Oversaw the digitization of eighty films with a budget of $66k. 2-National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) oversaw the film preservation and photochemical duplication of five nitrate-based and fragile 16mm safety-base motion picture films from WCS’s collection.
Lab Operator, Kodak Advanced Materials and Chemicals 200 West Ridge Road, Rochester, NY 14615. September 14, 2020 to April 11, 2022.
- Photochemical processing technician in the online quality assurance testing lab for film manufacturing.
- Exposed, analyzed, and evaluated test data against control standards for recently manufactured black and white and color film.
- Visually inspect film and identify coating and material defects during manufacturing.
Film Instructor, Northwest Film Center 934 Salmon St Portland, Oregon 97205. June 1, 2004 to July 20, 2015.
- Designed lesson plans for animation, optical printing, hand-processing, and street documentary classes and workshops. Students learned to expose, hand process, transfer, and digitally edit using black and white 16mm film.
Motion Picture Processing Lab Technician, Colorlab 5708 Arundel Avenue Rockville, MD 20852. August 1, 2008 to June 30, 2011.
- Ran black and white motion picture processing machine. In complete darkness checked for torn perforations, and built reels with camera negatives, and in-house prints. Ran daily scratch tests, with developer sensitometry tests, and used timing test strips to calibrate the density of black-and-white processing with the lab’s timer and printing technician.
- Developed working knowledge of film post-production and archival film preservation workflows using photochemical, digital scanning, and film recording.
Motion Picture Processing Lab Technician, A-1 Reversal Film Lab 333 W 39 ST NYC, NY 10018. August 1, 1999 – May 20, 2004.
● Ran black and white, and color reversal motion picture processing machine.
● Prepped and printed A and B roll reversal camera originals, and dirty dupes.
Media Appearances
- Featured on the Wild Audio Podcast, an interview where I discuss film preservation:
Conference Presentations and Professional Committees
- 2023 – Present, Member of the AMIA Preservation Committee.
- 2023, AMIA Small Gauge and Amateur Film Symposium: Let the Emulsion Show: MIX NY LBGT Film Festival. A screening of experimental films exhibited at the MIX Film Festival in NYC.
- 2023, 100 Years of 16mm Film Conference, Indiana University Bloomington. Let the Emulsion Show: MIX NY LBGT Film Festival. A screening of 16mm experimental film prints that were exhibited at the MIX Film Festival in NYC.
Education
The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY. Certificate Student in Moving Image. 2020.
Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, Portland, Oregon. Continuing Education Classes in Digital Photo and Inkjet Printing, Book Arts & Letterpress Printing. 2005 to 2013
Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, NY. B.A. in Film and Electronic Media.
Leopoldo Bloom 