Leysis Quesada Vera was born in 1973. She lived in a small village, San Francisco, in the south of Matanzas province until she was seven, and the family moved to Amarillas. She graduated with a degree in English (1996), has been a self-taught photographer since 2000, and is a Member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). Leysis incorporates her life into her work, the people around her, especially her daughters Avril and Mia, are her greatest inspiration.

She has developed several national and international exhibitions and has obtained notable recognitions throughout her career, including the Tito Álvarez Creation Scholarship from UNEAC 2011, a nomination for the 2016 Magnum Emergency Funds Grants, a scholarship from The Foundation for a Civil Society (FCS) for FotoFest 2016, Magnum Foundation Scholarship 2021, and a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for the photo essay: “Cuba during the pandemic” published in The Guardian newspaper; The Annenberg Space for Photography in 2017 highlighted Leysis’s images in the exhibition “Cuba is.” Her work has been exhibited in countries such as Norway, Australia, the United States, Germany, Spain, Austria, Mexico, and Cuba, and her work has also been collected by private and institutional collections worldwide.