This story originally appeared in i-D’s The New Wave Issue, no. 373, Fall/Winter 2023. Order your copy here. “You are flying, travelling, over water and over land through these insane jungles that have been evolving as the life force of the planet over tens of millions of years,” James Deutsher, one half of the Australian duo who established biodiversity foundation DEEP, begins to describe an aeroplane trip that changed his life. It was on this journey—a long, arduous quest out to the middle of the Amazon rainforest —that James began to think that his work as an artist, curator and designer wa ..read more

This story originally appeared in i-D’s The Summer! Issue, no. 372, Summer 2023. Order your copy here. When the subject of surfing comes up, the images that populate most people’s brains are beaches in Southern California, Hawaii, or the shorelines of Senegal: locations that offer sunny and warm weather year round. The upper half of the US East Coast rarely comes to mind, considering that half of the year the weather forces its citizens to wear thick down coats and drink exorbitant amounts of coffee throughout the day. But against common knowledge, people in that region with access to beaches ..read more

A thick haze of ominous red smoke covered the expanse of sky at a beach near Pescadero, California. It was the late summer of 2020, and Governor Gavin Newsom had just declared a state of emergency due to the concerning California wildfire season. Nearly 4.5 million acres of the state’s land went up in flames in what became the first-ever classified “giga-fire.” Afterwards the air was so toxic that residents had to check the quality before confirming it was safe to leave their homes, making the depressing isolation of pandemic times somehow even more unbearable. On this particular beach, on thi ..read more

In Bologna, the fight against oppression and street raves are invariably intertwined. Nicknamed La Rossa due to the deep red hue of the ancient buildings and it being an epicentre of Italy’s political left, the world’s oldest student city (teaching at the university began in around 1088) has become a hub for untethered freedom of expression. Currently, a resistance against Giorgia Meloni’s far-right coalition government is building. It’s not uncommon for students with early morning classes to wake up to invitations slathered across the walls of the University district, left by activists during ..read more

Last March, thousands of protestors gathered in Columbus Park to rally against the New York government’s plan to build an $2.3 billion mega-jail in Chinatown, as well as three other facilities in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx (all predominantly neighbourhoods of colour) as part of a $8.3 billion plan. Rallying cries suggested that the proposed 29-story monolith would harm local businesses that are already struggling with its five-year construction, and demolition would further impact a population suffering from the long-term health affects of both 9/11 and Covid-19. Once finished, the jail, e ..read more

Before recently, I wasn’t sure there was anything at the center of the Venn Diagram that is modeling and mass incarceration. It turns out there is, and their name is Wali Deutsch.  I met the model-meets-abolitionist via Zoom to discuss their notable ascension in a relatively short year-and-a-half modeling career, where they’ve worked with photographers like Steven Meisel, Mario Sorrenti and have even covered the latest issue of i-D. But, in our 45-minute interview, we mostly discussed their commitment to dismantling the United States’ criminal legal system.  Wali and their brother A ..read more

Mohammad Gorjestani’s roots lie at the intersection of art and activism. “I'm from Iran—my family and I fled a war. We came to the US on asylum,” he shared at the opening of 1-800-Happy-Birthday, an exhibition honoring Black and brown lives lost to police violence,  (on view through Martin Luther King Day). “My mom was an organizer during the revolution in 1979, and my dad ran the art department at Tyran University at that time. We came to the US and I grew up in a section-eight, immigrant, Black and brown melting pot.”  After moving from Cupertino to the Bay area, he was compelled ..read more

Pedro Pinho is a São Paulo-based photographer. The weekend before the second-round vote of the Brazilian general election, which took place on 30 October, he travelled across the city photographing rallies held in support of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — AKA Lula — the leader of the left-wing Worker’s Party. Yesterday, he won the majority of the nation’s vote, toppling the dangerously right-wing government of Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Here, Pedro and the activists and rally attendees he interviewed discuss the significance of the election — not just for Brazil, but for the rest of the world, too ..read more

At the age of 14, Slava Mogutin left his family and set off on a journey that would forever change the course of his life. He travelled from Siberia to Moscow, where he embarked on a career as a writer and journalist during the final years of the Soviet Union. The only openly gay personality in the Russian media, Slava confronted the taboos against homosexuality — a stance that made him the target for attack in two highly publicised criminal cases. Although he was charged with "malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence," he refused to back down. In 1994 ..read more

“Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear.” These are the four freedoms President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined in his historical 1941 State of the Union Address, as the United States prepared to aid Britain in a second World War that was steadily unfolding. For the Saturday Evening Post, artist Norman Rockwell interpreted the speech with a series of paintings showing everyday Americans embodying liberation. Seventy years later, with that dream so far from reality for so many in the US, artists Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo and ..read more