The idea for The Migratory Patterns of North American Queers at the Turn of the Century came about when I started to use blank baby and wedding albums from Goodwill to practice arranging the stills from my films into a book format.
An unexpected juxtaposition emerged when I would superimpose my film transparencies into these manufactured books meant to hold and order our culture’s most defining life milestones.
These books, created to provide people a standardized format to present their life and family history with text and photos, suddenly took on new meaning beneath the images I took in my twenties during my search for a place to belong on the West Coast.
The contrast was poignant: the visual search for queer self-actualization—moments that have no designated narrative space in the collective imagination—underneath the textual blueprints for society’s most sanctioned life events.
As I composed my own photographic albums with these found materials, I realized I could simultaneously write an interactive photo album that others could use to frame their own migration narratives using a queer lens.
These pages are proofs of a concept. Drafts or book dummies that I have assembled to show people the idea that has been incubating in my heart for nearly ten years.
These pages were made in the fall of 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, after the initial implementation of Project 2025. It uses a mix of digital text and proof pages printed on a letterpress.
After more than six months of prepress work and hand setting my writings with type, I had to discontinue my work because the open hours at the only nonprofit book arts community art space in NYC were drastically cut back due to budget cuts for the arts.
Written and created by Leopoldo Bloom and designed with Meredith Adams
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The Migratory Patterns of North American Queers at the Turn of the Century 