Indy Johar is an architect and systems thinker who spends his time pulling apart the hidden machinery of modern life. Trained in architecture but unwilling to stay confined to buildings, his work ranges across cities, climate, finance, and governance, always circling the same question: how did our institutions become so misaligned with the futures they claim to serve. As a cofounder of Dark Matter Labs, he works on redesigning the social and economic systems that shape everyday life, especially under conditions of ecological and political strain.

I photographed Johar at the Cowell Theatre during his Long Now Foundation talk, The Problem of Now. On stage, he spoke about how short-term incentives hollow out public trust and lock societies into brittle trajectories. The talk was less a lecture than a provocation, asking the audience to confront the moral consequences of speed, extraction, and convenience. Johar does not offer easy solutions. He offers something harder: a demand to think longer, act more honestly, and take responsibility for the systems we choose to maintain.