Devotion

Love was in the air, or maybe it always is. I recently kept finding myself in conversations with artists and writers about love and dating. Tumi Adeleye wanted to do a photo essay on the first date — that moment of meeting someone, the outfit you put together, the coy demeanor you wear at dinner. Adeleye played out this dynamic in the romantic setting of Soho Warehouse in downtown L.A., two lovers wearing their hearts on their sleeves. We’ve published the luscious photo essay and followed it with a hilarious piece of flash fiction by A. Cerisse Cohen, who also reflects on dating in L.A., albeit from the more torturous side.

The idea of love is at the core of our spring issue, the Devotion issue. Each of these stories explores a form of reverence and worship: for that iconic Takashi Murakami x Louis Vuitton bag, for exquisite trees (see: Charles Gaines), for the ancient art of clowning, for the loved one you recently lost, for the city you live in. Devotion takes time and energy, and at least some obsession. We devote ourselves to causes, religions and people. But it is the devotion to art that takes center stage in these pages.

Our cover story is on Paz de la Huerta, the famed actor and model whose image has been hard to disentangle from controversies and scandals, most prominently the Harvey Weinstein trials. For this story, De la Huerta set out to recreate her image — this time, on her own terms. This is a story of devotion on many levels: to oneself, to image making, to those you idolize.

The story all came to be because Devan Díaz, an admirer, saw on Instagram that De la Huerta was seeking help with staging a glamorous photo shoot of herself. Díaz reached out, and from there she helped realize De la Huerta’s vision by organizing a trip to L.A. with a team of artists, including photographer SebastiancAcero. For the shoot, De la Huerta wanted to inhabit the roles of three characters, “three viable paths her life could’ve taken”: the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, a mother and a whore. And so she did, starting one Sunday placing roses at Monroe’s grave and ending it by stripteasing in her bedroom at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Díaz makes space for each of these characters that De la Huerta holds inside of her, and the result is a moving piece, a testament to Díaz’s own devotion to her complex subject. It reads like nothing else previously written on De la Huerta, and further unsettles and expands her image.

Some of my favorite essays, photographs and artworks are ones that feel like exercises in love. I keep thinking of that quote from EJ Hill: “Tenderness is our superpower.” I like to think of this March issue as a collection of love stories, made possible because of the tireless devotion of artists.

Elisa Wouk Almino
Editorial Director

Image logo by Jessica de Jesus Los Angeles Times