What the Light Remembers: Ignacio Leonidas and the Stories That Endure

STORY BY ITZEL ROBLES

Published on June 3, 2025

When Ignacio Leonidas speaks about his work, there’s an unmistakable sense of quiet urgency—an understanding that the stories he tells aren’t just worth documenting; they’re in danger of disappearing altogether.

“I was born in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world,” he says, his voice carrying the soft weight of an Argentine accent, untouched by time. “It’s a place where Indigenous history runs deep—but so much of it has been lost or misrepresented. That’s what drew me to documentary work in the first place.”

Now living in New York City and a photography teacher at the Bronx Documentary Center, Leonidas has spent the last decade traveling between the Americas to unearth forgotten stories and to empower others to tell their own.

Leonidas got his first camera during a student exchange at The University of Vermont. “I was always drawing and painting, but photography just felt like a new tool for seeing,” he says. That curiosity quickly evolved into a more committed artistic practice, one rooted in traditional processes like analog film, pinhole cameras, and darkroom printing.

Having returned to Buenos Aires, he enrolled in a photography school that encouraged both technical experimentation and community-based storytelling. Yet it wasn’t until an encounter at a protest that he found his lifelong subject.

“There was a march happening, and I started talking to this Indigenous group from northern Argentina,” he says. “They were protesting because their land was being deforested, and resulting in the flooding of their homes. I ended up going to their village. That was the first time I really placed myself inside a story.”

He returned several times, photographing not just the crisis but the community's response to it. “I wanted to give them back the images I created, to make them part of their own archive,” he says.

Leonidas' most ambitious work to date is his multi-year collaboration with the Yagán people, also known as the Yámana, an Indigenous community spread across the southern tips of Argentina and Chile.

“They’re the southernmost Indigenous community in the world,” he says. “But I found barely any documents of them as they are today. Most of what existed was colonial or anthropological material from the past.”

He spent multiple summers in Puerto Williams, Chile, living with the community, learning their traditions, and slowly building trust. With funding from The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), he and a collaborator organized a photography workshop for local youth that combined pinhole photography with hand-colored archival images, with the purpose being to bridge generations and preserve disappearing language and culture.

“The Yagán language is over 10,000 years old. The last fluent speaker died two years ago,” Leonidas says. “So for me, photography isn’t just about art—it’s become a tool for cultural survival.”

He later replicated the workshop on the Argentine side of the community. The result is a body of work that blends photojournalism, visual anthropology, and participatory education.

Leonidas moved to New York City two years ago and quickly found his way to the Bronx Documentary Center. “I walked in, saw the darkroom, and immediately thought—okay, I need to be here,” he laughs.

He began as a volunteer, then assisted in some workshop classes. In 2023, he became the lead teacher for the BDC’s Intro to Photography high school program.

“I teach students how to shoot manually, think about composition, and now we’re working on documentary storytelling,” he says. But Loonidas brings more than technical skills into the classroom; he brings a deep commitment to community storytelling as well.. “It’s about giving them the tools to look at their own lives and their neighborhood in new ways.”

To him, photography is a democratic medium. “Everyone already has a camera in their pocket, but when we teach them about photojournalism, or film photography, or darkroom work, it gives them a different relationship to reality. It invites reflection.”

Whether he's photographing a rural cow herder in Patagonia or guiding a Bronx teen through a digital camera, Leonidas' approach is the same: slow, respectful, embedded.

“I try to spend time with people before I ever take out the camera,” he says. “Once there's a real connection, the images come naturally. They’re a reflection of that trust.”

His current projects include a portrait series of Indigenous migrants living in the U.S.—including a woman from Chile’s Kawésqar community now based in New York. “She’s become an advocate for Indigenous rights at the UN. Her story is about migration, identity, and resilience.”

For Leonidas, art is not separate from life—it is a form of witnessing, a way of resisting erasure. “I want to make people visible,” he says. “Especially the ones history tends to forget.”

In every frame, Leonidas is chasing something deeper than beauty or recognition: he is chasing memory, justice, and presence. His photographs are not just documents; they are acts of remembrance, carved in light.

Follow Ignacio: @ignacioleonidas