The country’s second biggest city is a global melting pot of humanity, filled with brilliant self-made creatives from every possible race, creed, and background. They work to honor themselves and their heritage, and thereby are effecting change, opening hearts, and feeding souls. Here are 10 inspiring minds shaping the city and our worldview.
In her 2019 book, Sun Seekers: The Cure of California, Lyra Kilston, a fourth-generation Angeleno, notes that the Golden State is akin to “a giant natural sanatorium,” a beacon of health and wellness. Those same seekers are also after the city’s artistic promise. Artists, chefs, musicians, and, of course, those chasing Hollywood all converge at Los Angeles’s sunny crossroads of hope and ambition.
From the outside, Los Angeles can look quiet: but like in the movies, much of the magic is behind the scenes. Peek inside an art studio, a restaurant, a set, or simply look outside, and you’ll find determined forces who are hard at work all over the city. Take, for example, Jacob Jonas, an in-demand choreographer from Santa Monica who determinedly fought through health hardships via dance; there’s self-made Pasadena-born photographer Thalia Gochez raising money for nonprofits by selling her prints of the Latinx community; and, at his studio in Lincoln Heights, artist Deondre Davis is creating works with found materials. Even with the threat of looming natural disasters, LA denizens never stop getting on with it, and most importantly, they never stop dreaming.
THALIA GOCHEZ, PHOTOGRAPHER
Instagram: @thaliagochez
Thalía Gochez has deep Los Angeles roots: “LA means everything to me,” says the born-and-raised Angeleno, who grew up in Pasadena and Highland Park with Mexican-Salvadoran immigrant parents. Gochez is a self-taught photographer whose work is centered on Latinx culture and presented through a girlish lens. She began shooting after picking up her first camera for a dollar at a flea market in San Francisco. Since then, her artfully styled photography has been featured in global campaigns for Nike, Adidas, and the latest World Cup.
A self-described “visual artist,” Gochez has a wholehearted creative vision that isn’t limited to photography alone – while on set or conceptualizing a shoot, she often does the styling, casting, location scouting, and even hair and makeup. “My goal was always to go beyond a fashion- led visual to create [actual] stories,” she says. One of her latest projects, Manos Benditas (which is Spanish for ‘Blessed Hands’), does just that. The series features street vendors from LA who Gochez found after partnering with the nonprofit organization Midcity Mercado. The resulting prints raised funds for the vendors. “It allowed me to see the power of photography and what it can do to bring the community together,” says Gochez, who considers taking pictures as a form of healing. “You can’t Photoshop intimacy. That’s something that truly comes from working on a fundamental connection and friendship.”
AISSA ROSE, WRITER AND FILMMAKER
Instagram: @aissar0se
“My writing is a compass for me,” says the LA-based screenwriter Aissa Rose. Born in Paris to Senegalese parents, Rose moved to New York City when she was two. After graduating from Wesleyan University, Rose hopped on a plane to LAX knowing she wanted to break into screenwriting. “I was like, I’ll just land there and figure it out – the universe will be on my side.” Since then, Rose has worked her way up, landing in some of Hollywood’s most exclusive writers’ rooms including Robin Thede’s A Black Lady Sketch Show, where she was introduced to Issa Rae’s “entire world” and began working for Rae’s production company. “All these people I look up to, from writers to actors to directors to executives, a lot of people in Black Hollywood pulled me up and championed me,” she says.
Rose has served as a writer’s assistant on Rae’s HBO show, Rap Sh!t, and is currently working with director Mara Brock Akil on the second season of her Netflix series, Forever. She has also modeled for Glossier and Fenty Beauty, and is eager for more screen time. “I’m thinking about performance as an evolution of what I’ve already been doing,” she says. “I believe words are spells, and I’m curious about what my body contorts into when it responds to the word.”
CARLOS JARAMILLO, PHOTOGRAPHER
Instagram: @_carlosjaramillo_
“What I love about LA is that it reminds me so much of Texas,” says photographer Carlos Jaramillo. Born in the border town of McAllen, TX, to Mexican-Colombian parents, Jaramillo’s powerful work centers on the Latin- American experience across the United States. Jaramillo has lived in Miami, Chicago, and New York – where he attended the School of Visual Arts – but it’s his adopted hometown that has proven to be the most fertile ground for his artistic process. “I feel really inspired in LA, and I think part of that was meeting the Latino community,” he says. “A lot of the artists, creatives, entrepreneurs – Latinos in power – are contributing something to the industry they’re working in.”
Jaramillo has joined these ranks with recent work being published in The New York Times and The New Yorker. He’s also partnered with designer Willy Chavarria on several shoots for both his namesake brand and Adidas offshoot. On some days, you might find Jaramillo studying the light or a particular community in South Central. The humanity shines through in his pictures, particularly when it comes to his Latino brethren. “We’re being depicted in a singular way, but there’s so much beauty in the stories that aren’t being told,” he says. “If nobody’s going to tell these stories, I’m going to do it myself.”
DEONDRE DAVIS, ARTIST
Instagram: @tux_pants
“Moving to Los Angeles was intentional because of the historical lineage of the African-American artists that thrive here,” says Deondre Davis. The self-taught visual artist arrived from Chicago six years ago and has gone from making drawings, paintings, and art from found materials in his bedroom to solo shows in galleries such as Gordon Robichaux in New York and Castle in Los Angeles. Davis describes his practice as “material redirections,” which involves “taking material from its intended purpose and redirecting it.” He primarily works with objects that he finds while traveling by train or foot across LA.
Though he currently doesn’t drive, Davis’s pedestrian-forward lifestyle allows him to see a side of the city that most people don’t – coming into close contact with the environments around him as he travels daily from his home in Koreatown to his studio in Lincoln Heights. By day, Davis works at a West Adams community center run by the Department of Cultural Affairs, which is just as important to Davis’s work as his artmaking. “It’s my way of trying to stick to that lineage of being community-rooted, to inform my practice,” he says. This fall, he will be staging a presentation of his work in Paris with Gordon Robichaux, and next spring, a solo show with Sea View in Los Angeles.
DARYA KHONSARY, JEWELRY DESIGNER
Instagram: @daryakhonsary / @dariusjewels
Jewelry designer Darya Khonsary founded her line, Darius, in 2020 as a means of exploring her Persian heritage and the connection between ancient and modern worlds. A native Angeleno, she grew up living with her Iranian grandparents and great-grandmother in a house where Persian traditions and holidays were honored, speaking Farsi was the norm, and wearing “jewelry for protection” was a large part of her upbringing. Khonsary was inherently creative, experimenting with various artistic mediums, but it was her mother’s special collection of heirloom jewelry from Iran that held a special fascination. Inspired by those pieces, Khonsary draws on ziggurat patterns from Mesopotamia and Iranian Qajar-era symbolism for her designs.
Her otherworldly works are made of 18-karat fair-mined gold and rare gemstones – like antique or reclaimed diamonds, the rarest Colombian emeralds, and Padparadscha sapphires. Khonsary works with master goldsmiths local to LA who hand-fabricate every component of the collection, including custom earring backs and clasps. Darius’s mystical properties have quickly attracted celebrity fans such as Charli xcx, Zendaya, Pedro Pascal, and Rihanna. “I’m trying to bring back [old world] techniques that aren’t really being used in modern day creations of jewelry,” says Khonsary. “My hope for Darius is that it feels like it’s a part of the earth and connects us to a memory that none of us can put into words.”
GABRIELA ORTEGA GARCIA, FILMMAKER
Instagram: @bygabrielaortega
Gabriela Ortega García began making films out of spite. “Someone told me I couldn’t write a screenplay, and I like to prove people wrong,” says the director, who was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. After receiving a scholarship to attend USC’s prestigious acting school, García made her way to LA, where she has resided for the last 13 years, moving from theater to screen acting to screenwriting and eventually to making her own films. García’s directorial debut, the seven- minute short Papi – an homage to her father, Franklin Ortega, whom she describes as a celebrity dentist back in the DR – was shot on her iPhone while she was home visiting her family. HBO caught a glimpse and bought the rights to stream the film on its platform.
García’s follow-up was Huella, a story of a dancer’s late grandmother, whose spirit comes back to haunt her. García received Indeed’s Rising Voices award to fund the project, including a $100,000 grant, and ended up showing the film at Sundance in 2022. Now she’s kind of a regular: her most recent film, Marga en el DF, had its world premiere, also at Sundance, last year. “Some of us get to live out their dreams, and some of the people before us didn’t get to dream as big as we do,” says García. “That’s been a very big theme of my work.”
JACOB JONAS, CHOREOGRAPHER
Instagram: @jacobjonasthecompany
For some, dance is an expression of the self; for others, it’s a lifeline. Born and raised in LA, Jacob Jonas was 21 when he founded his namesake nonprofit, Jacob Jonas The Company. It was the outlet he never knew he needed. After a friend passed following a battle with cystic fibrosis, Jonas created Obstacles, a piece that confronted “the struggle between medicine and dance.” It’s a fraught relationship that Jonas knows intimately: at age 30, he was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma – a side effect caused by the medication he had been taking for a decade to manage his Crohn’s disease. He documented his harrowing journey in memoir Cemented Beauty and now, at 34, fortunately shows no signs of slowing down.
His style of contemporary dance – one that weaves performance art with movement, narrative, and psychology – has been performed at storied venues such as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Hollywood Bowl. Pop icons such as Sia, Elton John, Kanye West, and Britney Spears have also called upon his choreography services. He’s got a European tour with his company on the horizon and would like to write a feature film. How does he do it all? “I listen as much as possible to the ideas that want to occur in my mind,” he says. “Then I try to integrate those ideas and thoughts and bring them to a physical form.”
MAH FERRAZ, FILM EDITOR
Instagram: @mahferraz
Mah Ferraz may not be a household name, but pretty much everyone she collaborates with is. The queer Brazilian film editor has cut and mixed music videos for superstars including Lady Gaga and Doechii (Runway), Rosalía (Tuya and Despechá) and Chappell Roan (The Subway). Ferraz has also been hired to work on videos for Meta, Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola, among other big-name brands. Born in São Paulo and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Ferraz moved to New York City, attending Columbia University and The New School, then began working at a post-production house, eventually becoming an independent editor when she struck out on her own.
Since then, she has won more than 85 awards and nominations for her work from all the top guns – the Emmys, Cannes Lions, Webbys, Clio, and more. “It’s my art, it’s the way I put my creativity out there,” she says of her work. In 2024, she co-founded Church Edit, an agency that not only represents the best editing talents, but also serves as mentors for the next generation. Recently, it opened a New York office, a testament to its expanding force in the industry, but Los Angeles is still home. The proximity to the city’s creative pool of musicians and artists is essential for much of Ferraz’s music video work. “LA makes me feel at peace in a way that I can focus,” she says. “As a city it makes me feel inspired.”
KARLA SUBERO PITTOL, CHEF
Instagram: @karlasuberopittol / @chainsaw.la
If you see a swarm of people in the new up-and-coming arts neighborhood “Melrose Hill”, you can expect that they are waiting to dine at Chainsaw, chef Karla Subero Pittol’s “fast-casual, Venezuelan-ish café,” which was informed by her upbringing spent eating Caribbean cuisine. On offer are lovingly handmade arepas made with jamón serrano and salty white cheese, and slices of her viral passionfruit lime icebox pies. The Venezuela-born, LA-raised chef started Chainsaw as a pop-up out of her garage in Echo Park in 2019, aptly named The Garage. There, she hosted dinners in the eclectically designed event space, serving up cocktails, savory dishes, and dessert.
Then the pandemic hit and, like many others, Pittol was forced to shift gears: she began making her now-signature icebox pies and flavored ice creams such as roasted pineapple coconut sorbet that would go on to fund the brick-and-mortar iteration of Chainsaw, which she moved into in 2025. Pittol makes dishes reminiscent of her heritage. “There’s so much corn, tomatoes, masa, and cheese,” she says. “When I cook for work, I feel like those ingredients always end up being the foundation of a meal.” Still, Pittol doesn’t subscribe to one specific cuisine or category: “There’s nothing consistent about my process. I’m always changing things. One day it’s pie and ice cream, and on another I’m roasting a whole lamb over an open fire.”
SARA LEE HANTMAN, GALLERIST
Instagram: @saraleehantman / @seaviewla
“I wanted to be in a community of artists my entire life,” says Sara Lee Hantman, the founder and director of Sea View gallery in Hollywood. Known for being a fixture of the LA art scene with openings that turn into late-night dinner parties, Hantman’s vision for Sea View centers on an artist-first model, meaning she prioritizes her “artists’ livelihoods with full transparency.” Located in the center of Hollywood, Sea View exists in a beautiful, meticulously restored 1930s residential duplex that looks out onto a verdant courtyard, where the post-show dinners take place. “I wanted to do something that felt more personal and slow-paced,” she says.
After years of working for galleries in New York such as Venus Over Manhattan and The Journal, Hantman opened Sea View with “a deliberate effort to learn from and counter traditional gallery methods.” The first iteration was located in a historic house designed by Jorge Pardo in the hills of Mount Washington, which gave birth to its evolving domestic format. “I really wanted to put conversation and relationships first,” she says. This September, Hantman will stage a solo exhibition with the LA-based artist Magnus Maxine and she hopes to bring Sea View abroad. “It was always meant to be a place where people could spend time and look at work without the structural elements that put transaction first.”
Update: Sept. 17 — The Magnus Maxine show has been postponed to February 2027. New York-based artist Tuere Nicole Lawton will now show at Sea View later this fall.
Taken from 10 Magazine USA Issue 7 – HERITAGE, LEGACY, FUTURE – out September 18! Order your copy here.
Photographer MAIWENN RAOULT
Talent DARYA KHONSARY, GABRIELA ORTEGA GARCIA,
AISSA ROSE, SARA LEE HANTMAN, THALIA GOCHEZ,
DEONDRE DAVIS, JACOB JONAS, KARLA SUBERO PITTOL,
CARLOS JARAMILLO, and MAH FERRAZ
Text DALYA BENOR
Sittings editor ALMA DE GANAY
