Jordan Gonzalez for Issue 19

“Is identity something we discover or create?” Jordan echoes the question tenderly, as if he is rolling it around on his tongue to sense which parts of it taste like truth. “It’s who we are in the dark and not in the daylight,” he finally says, and in that moment, the air seems to still.

To speak to Jordan is to rest beside a soft quiet, one that follows long walks in the fall of amber leaves as the trees undress. He thinks wisely, speaks gently, and carries himself with the calm gravity of someone who has lived many versions of himself and survived all of them. Filming has carried him far from home once more, yet he glows with the steady light of someone shaping a life he loves, even when the effort runs deep. There is an earthiness to him that feels instinctive, a Taurus who draws strength from the ground beneath him. Beyond that stillness lives a sharpened sensitivity, a sense of ongoing becoming, a hunger for truth and nuance. He talks about energy, walking as a form of worship, and the power and danger of being seen. Somehow, he gathers the soft threads of his existence and shapes them into something almost celestial, as if every part of him is a star waiting to find its constellation.

Maybe that is exactly what it means to be human: to hold all of our contradictions at once. To meet the world with softness even when it is safer to retreat into an eclipsed stillness. To keep stepping toward ourselves with the hope that the version we meet tomorrow will be a little braver, a little clearer, a little more whole.

Take in the full 18-page story beyond this teaser. Our brand new Autumn Winter 2025 issue, "To Be Human" is available to buy online.