Lifestyle
This tarot reader wants so badly to tell you your future
Avery, styled as the Priestess, wears Balenciaga dress and shoes, Ashton Michael necklace and cuff.
I want so badly to tell you about your future. I’ve made it clear on my website that I am not a psychic but now that you’ve paid me for a tarot reading and you’re sitting here in front of me, it’s obvious you want me to tell you what is going to happen. Ninety-eight out of 100 times, you specifically want to know the future of your love life or your career. (In the remaining two instances, you want to know where you should live.)
Before we met, I asked you to draft an open-ended yet specific question to bring to the cards. And although you think you’ve found the secret way of predicting your future by asking me what needs to change in your current romantic relationship or how to decide whether you should quit your job, I’m sorry to say you haven’t. I could be didactic with you — sure, quit your job, marry your partner, move to the burbs — and that may feel like a prognostication of sorts. But having an opinion is not the same as having the answer, and so I make it clear before we begin that not only will I not predict your future, I won’t tell you what to do either. I won’t even answer the very question I required you to prepare, not because I don’t want to but because I can’t.
Our present is so uncertain that it’s no great surprise everyone wants me to tell them what happens next.
“It is not the job of a card reader to promise revelations,” Jessica Dore writes in her book “Tarot for Change,” “because that’s not how secrets work.” Dore offers an understanding of the cards as having a “midwifing function, in which they ask questions as part of a birthing process that brings forth new life. Questions that broaden rather than narrow down.” Put simply, a tarot card is a prompt. In the duration of our time together, you will have asked the deck a single question, but every card drawn in response will have offered a different question back to you; you will leave this reading with more questions than you started with. “This is good,” Dore consoles. “Questions are passageways to new life.”
The earliest versions of tarot decks weren’t even used as a form of divination. Tarot was just a trump card game first played by Europeans in the 1400s. But so strong is the human urge to predict the future that late-19th and early 20th century occultists adopted the cards as a tool for their mystical explorations. The tarot deck I use, the instantly recognizable Rider-Waite-Smith deck, is the one as reimagined by a few of those occultists, and dates back only to 1909.
I do wish I could tell you exactly what will happen next. I wish I could tell myself the same. But while I cannot predict your future, or mine, I can tell you a story.
A.E. Waite, the “author” of the modern tarot deck, first met Pamela Colman Smith, the deck’s eventual illustrator, when they were both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society that essentially practiced magic. It may sound fantastical and even a little silly to imagine a gathering of adults conducting mystical rituals in secret while wearing Egyptian costumes, but when we consider the historical context of rapid social and technological change in which these orders were formed, it’s no wonder their members sought out tools of control and divination. Their world was evolving very quickly and unexpectedly, and they longed for the comfort of a certain future.
Our own cultural context is not so dissimilar. When I use this deck as your tarot reader today, I may not be dressed like Cleopatra, for example, but when you picture a tarot reader here in Los Angeles, are they wearing a flower crown? And are we, as a society, not also grappling with extraordinary sweeping cultural and technological changes? Our present is so uncertain that it’s no great surprise everyone wants me to tell them what happens next.
Besides the one regarding your future, your most looming question of our reading, at least at the start, might be what have you paid me for. As I said before, I do wish I could tell you exactly what will happen next. I wish I could tell myself the same. But while I cannot predict your future, or mine, I can tell you a story.
Here’s one: The first tarot reading I ever received occurred at a famous occult shop and tearoom in New Orleans. I was 17 and all I wanted to know was whether I was going to marry my high school boyfriend. I don’t recall what the cards said, only that the reader refused to give me a definitive answer about my boyfriend in her reading of them. Because of this, I did not engage her further about my spread, or layout of cards, and the tarot reading was over quickly. Still, I had paid for a certain amount of time with the reader, so she offered to look at my right palm. Now this reading I remember almost verbatim because upon noticing that my head and heart lines were merged as one — a Simian line, the ultimate representation of determination — the reader told me that if I were a man, she’d advise me to run for president one day.
I became a writer instead, not because I’m not a man, but because just like you, I was more curious about what my life could possibly amount to, and writing it all down in an attempt at synthesis seemed to be the closest I could get to predicting my own future.
Kitty, styled as the Two of Cups, wears KWK by KAY KWOK bodysuit, Yueqi Qi dress, Grounds shoes, Hugo Kreit earrings, Lillian Shalom ring.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” So goes the now-platitudinous opening quote from Joan Didion’s seminal essay “The White Album.” “We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices,” Didion explains. “We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.” This excerpt became so cliched amongst writers because it happens to be true.
In another oft-paraphrased standby of writers, the common definition of ‘to essay’ is to try, attempt or undertake. An essay, then, is both a noun and a verb, both an effort of interpretation as well as its result. For writers of essays, myself included, this also happens to be true. When I try to make sense of life, I attempt to turn the flashes of experience in my head into words on a page so that I may read them back to myself and hopefully understand, at least a little bit, where I’ve come from, so that I maybe even see what lies ahead.
Here is another story: The second tarot reading I ever received also took place in a tearoom. This one was in North Carolina and every Tuesday a local tarot reader offered a 30-minute reading for 50 dollars in the back room. On the Tuesday that I added my name to the list for drop-in readings, I had a $50 bill waiting on my desk at work that morning, a gift from my employer on the occasion of my birthday. I figured the reading would be a fun thing to do that evening, something that I would’ve never spent my own money on. I was not disappointed. This tarot reader proved to be far more mystical of a reader than I would ever be — she began our session by telling me that my dead grandfather was there, too. For the half an hour that I sat with her in the tearoom, I was fully entranced, if not fully convinced.
Wendy, styled as the Queen of Wands, wears Loewe wool long cape in red and high-waisted raw denim jeans, vintage ring.
Avery, styled as the Devil, wears BustedBrand latex bonnet, Weiraen bra, Ashton Michael shorts, Balenciaga boots.
I continued to see this woman sporadically for casual readings over the next few years, mostly as an entertaining, lighthearted hour of my life here and there. But when my husband (who was not my high school boyfriend, alas) and I were separating and contemplating a divorce, I booked a conversation with her almost immediately. Because even though my profession insists that I try to make sense of life through writing, I couldn’t understand what was happening in my own life, couldn’t find the narrative to describe how my husband and I had gotten here and, therefore, what would come next. I couldn’t even speak about the state of my marriage, let alone write about it; this language of loss was a foreign one. Tarot, which I had never taken all that seriously, now appeared as viable an option as any as a means of translation.
Through that charged tarot spread, the reader told me a story about myself that I didn’t realize I already knew. Or even if I did know it — in this case, that my husband and I would end up divorcing — it wasn’t one I could articulate. It’s not that the reader told me my marriage was over. Rather, she read the cards to me as questions that underscored the big one: What will happen to us? In answering those other prompts for myself and, more important, about myself, I came to understand that I already had the answer about my future, too. It was a paradox of sorts; by acknowledging where I had come from, I could see that there was no going back.
A deck of cards can provide the space to tell the stories we already know but haven’t yet read.
We often resist the work of returning to what has already happened or who we’ve already been, especially when we’re tempted by the optimism of the future and the resolution we want it to hold. But as I learned in that pivotal reading about my marriage, when you surrender to the narrative that already exists, when you quite literally accept the cards that life has already dealt you, the story of what may lay ahead practically tells itself.
This is a revelation perhaps more easily arrived at in tarot than in writing. “The externalization of internal experience onto a physical object like a card creates some distance that gives us room to breathe, shifts how we relate to ourselves, and offers a new vantage point to look from,” explains Dore. A deck of cards can provide the space to tell the stories we already know but haven’t yet read.
After you ask that thinly veiled question about what your future holds, we’ll start with a small spread of just six cards. One of those cards represents the recent past, just as there is one for possible outcomes. You, of course, are most interested in the possible outcomes card. I will remind you anyway to pay attention to the card about your past. This is what you’re paying me for: To reorient you again and again toward who you’ve been and where you’ve come from. Through those six cards, you’ll realize you already know the story but didn’t have the words for it. And in my speaking aloud that narrative for you through the questions from the cards, you’ll realize you already know the answers, and you already know what to do next, too.
Kitty, styled as the Queen of Swords, wears Vex Latex set, Ottolinger shoes, Armature necklace, MAM earring cuff, Lillian Shalom rings.
Wendy, styled as the Sun, wears KWK by KAY KWOK top, GCDS skirt, Nodaleto shoes.
Traditionally, an essay begins with a question and so does a tarot reading. Even the vocabulary I’ve been using here — readings and readers, translation, prompts, narratives, stories — speaks to the act of writing. Both are a practice, both are an attempt. And both are an essay, which means they each demand objectivity. I can only read your cards because they are your cards. “And this, of course, is why you should never read [tarot] for yourself,” cautions the writer and former professional tarot reader Alexander Chee in his essay “The Querent.” “You can’t give yourself the impersonal reading you need. It’s much like writing an essay — to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see.” This is where writing and tarot diverge for me because while I can pull cards for you, I can only tell my own stories here on the page.
An essay tells a story about what has already happened and in reading that story, you realize something about the future. The same can be said about a tarot reading. But in neither case do you learn the future itself, only who you might be in it, or the direction towards which you should look, or even just the fact that you can’t go back and must keep moving forward at all. So then, tarot and the essay share one last commonality: Both resist conclusion. After all, a conclusion is just another way of describing the future — something ends so something else can begin. We want a tidy prediction at the end of a tarot reading just as we want a bow at the end of an essay. Neither, of course, is possible. This is perhaps the biggest lesson imparted from my tarot practice to my writing one, and the lesson I try to impart to you in a reading.
So please, choose a card, and I’ll tell you a story about yourself. It won’t sound like a story about your future, but I can promise it’s one you’ll want to hear.
Producer: Imani Lindsey
Models: Wendy Pacheco, Avery Jade Richardson, Kitty Umiña
Makeup: Selena Ruiz
Hair: Adrian Arredondo
Prop stylist: Gina Canavan
Styling Assistant: Izzy Huynh
Claire Salinda is a writer and tarot reader from Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the Missouri Review, Assay, G*Mob, Thrillist and other publications. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.
Various species of sharks — some of which are endangered, while others are listed as vulnerable — are hauled on shore at dawn at the Tanjung Luar port on June 9, 2025, in East Lombok, Indonesia. Tanjung Luar is one of the largest shark markets in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, from where shark fins are exported to other Asian markets — primarily Hong Kong and China — and their bones are used in cosmetic products also sold to China.
Nicole Tung/Fondation Carmignac
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“We were fighting over who had caught more fish, and then I saw my crewmate pushed overboard by the captain,” Akbar Fitrian, 29, an Indonesian crewmember says as he recounts an incident aboard a Chinese-owned fishing vessel in 2022. “The ship then started to drive away as my crewmate tried to swim towards us. And then I don’t know what happened. The captain never reported the incident.”
The seas of Southeast Asia — home to some of the richest in biodiversity in the world — have long been in decline. Since the 1950s, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that 70-95% of fish stocks have been depleted and are at risk of collapse, perpetuated by the rise of industrial-scale fishing, much of which is illegal. Legal overfishing is another factor, and both are propped up by weak regulations, insufficient monitoring and insatiable demand. Approximately half of the world’s global marine fish catch comes from the seas of Southeast Asia, according to the U.N., and it comes at a calamitous cost.
In the United States, approximately 50% of the imported seafood comes from Asia, with nearly $6.3 billion in trade coming from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and India alone, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Behind the illicit seafood trade is an opaque world standing at the crossroads of intertwining issues. There is the legacy of brutal human rights violations that have enabled sea slavery to become the norm. Those involved in the efforts of organizations like the international Freedom Fund and Thailand’s Labour Protection Network, which work to end modern-day slavery in the region, say many workers are murdered at sea, abused and often brought into a cycle of debt bondage.
There is the lawless nature of the seas, which has emboldened traffickers to exploit desperate fishermen and impoverished casual laborers. Then there are the geopolitical factors at play: In a race to dominate the seas, China and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia have all built outposts and bases on shoals, reefs and atolls. Fishing fleets — of which China has the largest in the world — are fast becoming more militarized as a result.
All of this has imposed a heavy cost on unique ecosystems and led to devastating socioeconomic impacts on artisanal and small-scale fishers.
Three countries illustrate the intersectional nature of overfishing:
Thailand
Fishing vessels are seen docked together at a landing site in Chumphon, Thailand, on Jan. 22, 2025.
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“Fish were in abundance before,” says Mimit Hantele, 53, a member of the Urak Lawoi tribe on the island of Koh Lipe in Thailand. “But now, the fishing season is a lot shorter, the variety of fish is far fewer, and I sell less. So I take tourists out on scuba expeditions to earn money.”
For generations, the Urak Lawoi plied the rich waters around them for sustenance. Sea gypsies in a time past, the villagers evolved to rely only on what they could catch and used simple fishing equipment cast from small wooden boats.
Then, in the 1970s, came the big Thai and Malaysian fishing boats. Fishermen on Koh Lipe say the boats fish illegally around the island, appearing only at night to escape detection and in a protected national forest area. The ships use purse seiner nets and demersal trawlers, destroying the coral underneath and, consequently, the habitat for fish. Such overexploitation has led the Indigenous group to turn to tourism to make up for lost income and declining fish stocks. “Fishing is in our blood,” Hantele said, but “our way of life has changed. We can’t rely only on the fish.”
Frozen Spanish mackerel and other species of fish in cold storage in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, on Jan. 15, 2025.
Nicole Tung/Fondation Carmignac
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Fishermen mend nets in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, on Jan. 15, 2025.
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Small-scale artisanal fishermen shake sardines from nets to gather them en masse after returning to shore with their catch, in the Gulf of Thailand, off the coast of Prachuap, Thailand, on Jan. 20, 2025.
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According to a 2001 report from the U.N., roughly 80% of fishers in Southeast Asia at the time were small-scale or artisanal, relying on traditional practices. However, declining nearshore fish stocks have forced many artisanal fishers to venture farther from shore in search of commercially valuable species. Added to that are government subsidies for fuel and tax breaks for commercial fishing vessels, which have propped up the seafood industry. Rapid advancement in maritime technology has made fleets far more effective at finding rich hunting grounds while avoiding detection by switching off their monitoring systems.
Oranee Jongkolpath, 30, a veterinarian at Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources’ research and development center in the Rayong province, prepares to clean a hawksbill turtle in Prasae, Thailand, on Jan. 18, 2025. The turtle was found by fishermen in a garbage patch and was likely entangled in ghost nets — fishing nets that are lost or discarded by fishermen — that had caused severe damage to its two front flippers.
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A seafood merchant displays dried seahorses for sale in Chumphon, Thailand, on Jan. 22, 2025. Dozens of countries around the world are involved in the dried seahorse trade, with Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and India being the largest exporters. As the trade of seahorses, which are typically used for traditional medicines, has sharply increased, the seahorse catch has declined over time. Seahorses are among the species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
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Lax regulations on the most destructive types of fishing, particularly demersal trawling and cyanide fishing, the capture of juvenile fish that prevents the replenishment of stocks, the poor oversight of labor laws and the exploitation of workers desperate to earn a living have all contributed to the devastating knock-on effects for communities along coastlines and the potentially irreversible environmental consequences.
Members of a crew working on a Thai fishing vessel, most of whom are from Myanmar, prepare to show their documents to Port In Port Out (PIPO) inspectors in Chumphon, Thailand, on Jan. 22, 2025. PIPO inspection centers were set up in 2018, following an outcry in the international community over Thailand’s gross human rights abuses in its fishing industry.
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A Burmese dock worker sorts fish after a catch from a Thai vessel was unloaded in Ranong, Thailand, on Jan. 23, 2025.
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In Thailand last year, artisanal fishermen held protests over the rollback of major fisheries reforms implemented a decade ago that had helped to rebuild fish stocks in Thai waters. Thai corporations, which own a significant share of commercial fishing vessels, pushed the government to deregulate the fishing industry to increase their profits. Protestors focused on their concerns that relaxing the rules would revive illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and lead to increased overfishing. The rollbacks, they argued, would reduce transparency and accountability across the industry and reduce checks on gear and labor. Less transparency would lead to less knowledge about what is left in the sea. In turn, sustainability decreases, hurting artisanal fishers who depend on the sea for sustenance and livelihoods.
The Philippines
Filipino fishermen unload Yellowfin tuna, Bigeye tuna and blue marlin at a fish port in General Santos, the Philippines, on May 21, 2025.
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The first time Donald Carmen was harassed by Chinese boats off the coast of Palawan was in December 2024. The following February, they harassed him and another fisherman again, getting close enough to hit their outriggers. “They forced us to move away and recorded us with cell phones and cameras. I have been fishing in this area since 2016, and back then, everyone was free to fish. I would catch 400-500 kilograms of fish in a night, about 60 nautical miles offshore. Now, because I don’t dare venture out as far, I’m lucky if I catch 200-300 kilograms over three days,” Carmen said as he steered his banca just weeks later, on the lookout for Chinese fishing boats and militia.
A drone shot of the shoreline in Rizal, Palawan, the Philippines, on May 28, 2025. Many fishermen here have lost more than half their incomes because of harassment by Chinese ships, limiting the distances they can go out to sea to fish for specific species.
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Vincent Gehisan, 36, enjoys a meal at his home in Quezon, Palawan, the Philippines, on May 24, 2025. Gehisan was hassled and detained for nearly a day at sea by Chinese Coast Guard and navy ships while out on a resupply mission the year before and now says he’s afraid to venture far from Filipino shores to fish.
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People sing karaoke on May 21, 2025, at a local bar near the main fish port complex in General Santos, the Philippines, where the clientele are mainly fishermen on their days off.
Nicole Tung/Fondation Carmignac
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Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is inextricably linked to the geopolitical struggle for maritime dominance in the South China Sea. Over the past two decades, China has rapidly scaled up its fishing militias in a race to assert control over a vast area while trying to meet the country’s insatiable demand for seafood. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan have followed suit on a much smaller scale.
The South China Sea — or the East Sea, as Vietnam calls it, and the West Philippine Sea, as it’s known in the Philippines — is one of the world’s most strategic waterways. China’s use of its fishing fleet to control trade routes and dominate territory to create maritime buffer zones threatens the food security and livelihoods of fishers in the region.
Family members of Filipino fishermen place bait on fishing lines in Quezon, Palawan, the Philippines, on May 24, 2025.
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Small-scale Filipino fishermen unload their catch a fish port in General Santos, the Philippines, on May 22, 2025. The city is known as the Philippines’ tuna capital and hub for tuna fishing and products exports.
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While Chinese aggression has persisted for years in areas off Zambales, a province of the Philippines, it has only recently affected waters off the coast of Rizal in Palawan, as China is believed to be building up its presence in the Sabina and Bombay shoals, much closer to the Filipino coast — encroaching on the Philippines’ claim to the Kalayaan Island Group — from its original areas of claim like the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal. Among some of the tactics used by Chinese fishing militias to deter fishermen are water cannons, using swarming and encircling techniques, military-grade lasers and ramming fishing boats to intimidate and drive them from fishing grounds.
As countries in the region militarize their fishing fleets, the cost will ultimately be detrimental to ecological sustainability and geopolitical stability.
Indonesia
Indonesian fishermen unload various species, including sharks and wedgefish, which are one of the most threatened, in Tegal, Indonesia, on June 13, 2025.
Nicole Tung/Fondation Carmignac
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In Indonesia, poverty, lack of opportunities and desperation have pushed thousands of Indonesian men into trafficking circles, while others are lured by the promises of a well-paid job in the construction or service industries before being put aboard a fishing vessel unbeknownst to them. Patima Tungpuchayakul, the founder of Thailand’s Labour Protection Network, says hundreds of fishermen go missing from commercial vessels each year, and many more are brutalized while facing appalling conditions and inhumane, unsanitary conditions on board, often at the mercy of the captain or the ship’s owners.
Labor rights activists at the Migrant Resource Center in Pemalang, Indonesia, fishermen and a widow of a woman still fighting for compensation after her husband’s death say agencies in central Java are adept at recruiting Indonesian crew to work primarily on Chinese fishing vessels, entrapping them in a cycle of debt bondage and, in many cases, effectively enslaving them at sea. Workers are not offered compensation for death or injuries unless they or their families were aware of what kind of insurance the vessel owner had for them. In the worst circumstances, they face brutal working conditions and 16- to 22-hour workdays and are often subject to physical violence.
Fishmongers gather to sell the catch brought in at dawn by fishermen at the Tanjung Luar port on June 9, 2025, in East Lombok, Indonesia.
Nicole Tung/Fondation Carmignac
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A drone image of the largest commercial fish port in Indonesia, Muara Angke, where hundreds of commercial fishing vessels are docked, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on June 15, 2025.
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A fisherman poses for a photo in Pemalang, Indonesia, on June 13, 2025. Both Tegal and Pemalang are known as hubs for recruiting laborers who then work on commercial fishing vessels for Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean companies.
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Southeast Asia is still a hub for slave labor, primarily in Thailand and Indonesia, where the seafood trade contributes much of the tuna, shrimp and trash fish used for fishmeal to the supply chains of major retailers and pet food brands in the U.S. and Europe.
“There is now less physical violence and coercion — but coercion is now more debt-based,” says Rosia Wongsuban, a program advisor at the Freedom Fund, a nonprofit working to end modern-day slavery. “Working conditions are the same. Because of a labor shortage, there aren’t enough workers to operate on vessels, and then the crew needs to take the extra burden.”
“In order to work on the fishing vessel, which was Chinese-owned, I was given a loan of 4 million Rupiah,” Akbar Fitrian, 29, a fisherman interviewed in Jakarta, explains. “1 million went to paying for fishing equipment, and then I had to work until I paid back the other 3 million. Sometimes, I had to keep borrowing more to continue working to pay off the initial loan. Sometimes I would only end up with enough salary to buy cigarettes. Sometimes I went into the red.”
Anis Khuprotin, 28, rests her head on the gravesite of her husband, Muhamad Nur, in Tegal, Indonesia, on June 13, 2025. Anis’ husband died on board a commercial fishing vessel after a piece of equipment came loose and struck him in the head. Staff from the recruiting agency the hired her husband told her he died of a heart attack instead of admitting the truth in an attempt to avoid paying insurance fees to the family.
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Indra, 28, who declined to provide his last name out of fear for his safety, dresses as a clown and plays music to earn some extra money in his neighborhood in Jakarta, Indonesia, on June 14, 2025. Indra, who previously worked on a commercial fishing vessel, recounted harrowing experiences at sea, where he said he witnessed abuses of his fellow cremates. Since returning home, he’s refused to sign up for another job on a commercial fishing vessel, but says he has limited opportunities owing to the lack of a school degree. He currently works in a warehouse, packing boxes, and dresses as a clown to earn extra income.
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Fishermen play a card game on June 10, 2025, on Maringkik Island, off the caost of East Lombok, Indonesia.
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For the nearly 10 million people who rely on these fisheries for their livelihoods and source of protein, the future of Southeast Asia’s fisheries hangs in the balance, at the mercy of consumer demand and political will to enforce laws. The region faces not just ecological collapse, but deepening poverty, food insecurity and social instability if illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing continues unchecked. Overfishing occurs because high demand and global overconsumption for seafood far exceed the ocean’s ability to replenish itself. Growing markets — especially in China, the European Union and North America — have transformed fish and fish products into a highly profitable global commodity. Exports from Southeast Asia alone amount to over $5 billion worth of fish products to the United States each year, illustrating the scale of international trade. This demand fuels industrial-scale fishing operations such as bottom trawlers and purse seiners, which sweep through vast areas of ocean indiscriminately. Supported by government subsidies, these fleets prioritize maximum yield, even when fish stocks are already severely depleted.
But decline is not inevitable. With stronger regional cooperation, transparent supply chains, corporate accountability and informed consumer choices, Southeast Asia can reclaim stewardship over its waters. The survival of its fisheries — and of the communities that depend on them — hinges on decisions being made now, far from shore.
Various species of sharks — some of which are endangered while others are listed as vulnerable — are hauled on shore at dawn by commercial fishermen at the Tanjung Luar port on June 10, 2025, in East Lombok, Indonesia.
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This body of work, based on a nine-month-long investigation supported by the Fondation Carmignac, is on exhibit at the Bronx Documentary Center through April 26.
Nicole Tung is a photojournalist working primarily in the Middle East and Asia. You can see more of her work on her website, NicoleTung.com, or on Instagram, at @nicoletung.
This story is part of Image’s April’s Thresholds issue, a tour of L.A. architecture as it’s actually experienced.
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Yont Studio, Brutalist Pink Vinyl Listening Station, price upon request
(Serdar Ayvaz / Yont Studio)
In the best version of my dreams, I am listening to my favorite records out of the Brutalist Pink Vinyl Listening Station from Berlin-based Yont Studio. The structure — built of foam that’s been reinforced with epoxy layers and finished in a gloss — hugs a Technics SL-1200 MK7 turntable while featuring a dedicated space for records and headphones, with an integrated amplifier and wheels. The baby pink colorway gives it a hard-soft quality that’s hard to match. yontstudio.com
Waka Waka, Double Cylinder Rocker, $3,600
Designer Shin Okuda has described his design principle as such: “Minimum design. Conscious proportion.” The furniture from Okuda’s Los Angeles studio Waka Waka injects something deeply cool into the everyday. This rocking chair is equal parts dramatic and functional, featuring a stacked cylinder back, rocker frame and arm rests in a black glossy finish. (Other finishes include natural oil, white, pompeii red, indigo, grey, purple and forest green.) wakawaka.world
Gambol Studio X Dusty Ansell, knives, $230
Every item in your home being beautiful and well-designed is a flex, down to your cheese knives. Designed by L.A. studio Gambol and handmade by folk artist Dusty Ansell in a set of three, these knives are made of curly maple and stainless steel, featuring etched artwork depicting a hand, arm and fish. gambol.studio
Schiaparelli, Pierced Mouth Bijoux Minaudière, $13,300
Every design-meets-fashion head’s dream is having a pierced mouth clutch molded out of a rigid wood, no? This minaudière from Schiaparelli features a gold-plated metal chain and rhinestone piercing, bringing the idea of a statement bag to levels unheard of. schiaparelli.com
Hannah Lim X Hugo Harris, Bat Shelf, price upon request
(Hannah Lim and Hugo Harris)
Operating as a functional sculpture, the Bat Shelf is a collaboration between London artists Hannah Lim and Hugo Harris. The piece takes inspiration from Chinese fretwork patterns, Art Noveau designs and German sculptor Hugo Leven’s iconic pewter bat candelabras. Cut and welded from 5mm aluminum, the Bat Shelf comes in a raw aluminum finish or a powder-coated red. hannah-lim.co.uk ; hugoharris.co.uk
Formas, Clear Special Vase by Gaetano Pesce, $650
L.A. is so lucky to have Formas, a curated vintage and contemporary design store in the Arts District founded by Natalia Luna and Josh Terris. Formas’ collection is deep and well-researched, filled with rare furniture and design objects like this Clear Special Vase from iconic Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce. Handmade of flexible resin, each vase made in this series is a unique creation. formas.la
Estudio Persona, Luna Table Lamp, $2,500
Estudio Persona, the L.A. studio run by Uruguayan design duo Emiliana Gonzalez and Jessie Young, is a living, breathing wishlist. Made of metal and hand-blown glass, this lamp is the place where angles meet curves — a timeless piece with a healthy dose of edge. estudiopersona.com
Alaïa, nylon Maxi Petticoat, $5,030
When we think of an Alaïa piece we’re essentially thinking about shapes — of the body, of the clothes, of the shape made by the clothes on the body. This nylon Maxi Petticoat from the spring/summer 2026 collection, with its asymmetrical hemline and voluminous fit, is a kind of architecture, a way to build yourself into the world around you. maison-alaia.com
Loewe, Aire Sutileza Elixir Eau de Parfum 50Ml, $210
Image April 2026 Coveted
(Loewe Perfumes)
Loewe has added another perfume to its scent directory, and the sixth Elixir in a collection of fragrances that boast an intense concentration of essential oils created by the brand’s perfumer Núria Cruelles with the Spanish Rockrose in mind. The Aire Sutileza Elixir is floral, fresh and earthy, featuring notes of pear, lemon, jasmine sambac, vetiver, sandalwood and musk. perfumesloewe.com
Sunday Puzzle
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This week’s challenge
Today’s puzzle is a tribute to Mimi. Every answer is a familiar two word phrase or name in which each word starts with the letters MI-.
Ex. Assignment for soldiers –> MILITARY MISSION
1. Pageant title for a contestant from Detroit
2. One of the Twin Cities
3. Nickname for the river through New Orleans
4. Super short skirt
5. Neighborhood in Los Angeles that contains Museum Row
6. Just over four times the distance from the earth to the moon
7. Goateed sing-along conductor of old TV
8. American financier who pioneered so-called “junk bonds”
9. Little accident
10. Land-based weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal
11. In “Snow White,” the evil queen’s words before “on the wall”
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge comes from Benita Rice, of Salem, Ore. Name a famous foreign landmark (5,4). Change the eighth letter to a V and rearrange the result to make an adjective that describes this landmark. What landmark is it?
Answer
Notre Dame –> Renovated
Winner
Chee Sing Lee of Bangor, Maine
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from James Ellison, of Jefferson City, Mo. Think of a popular movie of the past decade. Change the last letter in its title. The result will suggest a lawsuit between two politicians of the late 20th century — one Republican and one Democrat. What’s the movie and who are the people?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, April 23 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
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