Who’s afraid of the dark? Amid bleak times, the Shadow issue of Dazed delves deep into the repressed parts of the brain we’d prefer to look away from, both as individuals and societies. Through its pages, a fearless rollcall of creatives making sense of the world by confronting its darkness head-on.

Fronting the issue, Adolescence star Owen Cooper leans in to his love of dark characters in a cover shot by seminal fine art photographer Justine Kurland; Rachel Sennott takes the weight of a generation’s anxiety in a surreal moment caught on camera by Alyssa Kazew; rap’s sad-boy enigma Yung Lean leads us down to the sunken place with photographer Cristina Stolhe; Chase Infiniti is captured by Thurstan Redding in a cover showing the calm under fire that’s made her an Oscars hopeful in her feature-film debut; design duo August Barron bring an uncanny twist to the tradwife aesthetic in a kink-scented cover shot by Lengua; and Anthony Seklaoui notches up a noir-tinged one-two in a pair of covers starring Dara Gueye and Loli Bahia, for Dior men and women respectively.

Strange forces pour out from the pages of this issue, with Arthur Jafa lifting the lid on his incendiary and alchemical art, a deep-dive essay unpacking the carnage of the 21st century to date, and Hoard director Luna Carmoon sharing visionary picks from her cultural syllabus. We hope it unleashes something in you, too.