Presenting Image Issue 34: Movement

Los Angeles Times

21-04-2025

It's the tail end of Aries season, the season of drive and action, of getting rid of stagnant energy. The season of spring and breaks and travel. For Issue 34, the Image team found inspiration in the expansive idea of movement.
The seed of this April theme came from Image's former beauty editor at large Darian Symoné Harvin, when she mentioned wanting to interview a pole-dancing trio. For the occasion, we organized a photoshoot at Tea at Shiloh in the Arts District, where the three women — Cami Árboles, Mackenzie Palmer and Devon Cherry — moved like liquid and light, 'their strengths coexisting,' as Harvin writes. To them, movement is as much about release as it is about pain and resilience, as they literally and spiritually hold one another up.
Movement, the trio has learned, can cause pain, but it also can help one grow from it. 'Feel the sensations!' my fitness instructor likes to say while I sweat and wobble in plank. 'Stay with the discomfort!' He's trying to change us not just physically but psychically. Movement alters us from within.
This issue is filled with dazzling images of people and things in motion: skaters in rinks, models on runways, luxury suitcases on planes. Movement is pleasurable, fun and transporting. It's also a form of community-building, as is illustrated in Kailyn Brown's incredible oral history of Black skate culture in L.A. And it's a means of finding self-expression, as Stephen Galloway tells Cat Woods in a feature on movement directors — the people orchestrating how models and actors carry their bodies on runways and stages.
In another essay, staff writer Julissa James touches upon the danger of when we move too quickly, when movement becomes a means to an end. Julissa recently felt the urge to 'spring clean' — to move things out of sight, as if clearing her entire closet could reset her life in the process. Alas, she writes: 'You can never really run away. I tried, and all I kept doing was running into myself. Over and over and over.' One of many things that Julissa's beautiful essay reveals is that we can only move forward once we integrate our past — once we've stayed with the discomfort, grown from the pain.
Elisa Wouk Almino
Editor in Chief
Image logo by Emma Bers For The Times
For these dancers, the pole is a portal for anyone curious to step into it Three spellbinding aerial artists in L.A. on the continuously evolving, and still misunderstood, art of pole dancing. Read the story 🤸🏽‍♀️
'We've always been here': An oral history of L.A.'s Black indoor roller-skating scene In L.A., roller skating for Black skaters is more than just rolling in circles around a rink. Read the story 🛼
What is a movement director? 5 visionaries share their most prized projects We talked to the people creating the library of movements, gestures and expressions for models, actors and performers. Read the story 🎬 Issue 34: Movement Order now
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When is it time to end a relationship? An examination of your moon sign can help light the way. Read the story 🌕
This momentous LACMA exhibition called for a group portrait — to the tune of Roberta Flack Artists in 'Imagining Black Diasporas' gathered for a special photograph, which will live on in the archives. Read the story 🖤
'This is art.' The rich world of lists, stationery and discarded pieces of paper For Grace Weinrib, going through her late father's belongings became an unexpected art project. Read the story ✂️
7 fashion items for the whimsical city girls From a Lacoste tennis skirt-inspired bag to the sweetest pair of headphones from Beats and Sandy Liang. Read the story 👜
8 L.A. happenings in April to keep you moving and energized Our monthly event listing for things to do in L.A., from Skims' first West Coast store to a quinceañera party. Read the story 🎟️