Liberated Threads: Stories of Black Style
Guest edited by Tanisha C. Ford, Liberated Threads explores style and fashion as a language of Black resistance, refusal, and joy. This issue features image-makers who remix and reimagine twentieth-century “soul style,” creating a contemporary dialogue between photographers, filmmakers, and stylists from around the world.
Exploring fashion and style as a political language and tool of resistance in the African diaspora.
Aperture’s Summer issue highlights image makers around the world who are exploring style and fashion as a language of Black resistance, refusal, and joy. Guest edited by the writer and researcher Tanisha C. Ford and titled after her 2015 book, Liberated Threads, this edition features photographers, stylists, and filmmakers who remix, reimagine, and in some cases, reject the aesthetic and politics of what she calls the “soul style” of the twentieth century—sparking a bold conversation about style’s ability to create possibilities for solidarity and selfhood today.
Features
LIBERATED THREADS
Guest edited by Tanisha C. Ford
LIVING ARCHIVE
Seydou Keïta’s revelatory portraits of Malian life
Kobby Ankomah Graham
LONDON CALLING
Liz Johnson Artur captures street style’s collision with high fashion
Gazelle Mba
HAIR STORIES
Nikki Nelms transforms hairstyling into conceptual art
madison moore
THE DIRECTOR
Melina Matsoukas creates space for Black stories in Hollywood and beyond
A conversation with Solange Knowles
CÔTE D’IVOIRE DREAMING
The brooding, buoyant intimacies of Nuits Balnéaires
Tiana Reid
FAMILY ALBUM
Silvia Rosi reimagines the African diaspora in Europe
Vanessa Peterson
TURNING THE PAGE
The legacy of Honey magazine
Amy DuBois Barnett
THERE ARE NEW SUNS
Two artists on the shifting meanings of self-representation and creative courage
A conversation with Ja’Tovia Gary and Fatima Jamal
PICTURE MAN
Devin Allen’s profound record of everyday life in Baltimore
Rikki Byrd
PROOF OF LIFE
The quiet world-building of the fashion stylist Yashua Simmons
A conversation with Darnell L. Moore
Columns
AGENDA
Wolfgang Tillmans, Stan Douglas, Marta Astfalck-Vietz, Annegret Soltau
DISPATCHES
Dalia Al-Dujaili on the efflorescence of Baghdad’s photo world
REDUX
Robert Slifkin on James Welling’s journey into light and darkness
STUDIO VISIT
Somak Ghoshal on Bharat Sikka’s creative New Delhi workspace
SPOTLIGHT
Eli Cohen on 2025 Aperture Portfolio Prize winner Alana Perino’s elegiac search for meaning in a Florida beach town
CURRICULUM
Jack Davison on Flickr, mugshots, and The Simpsons
ENDNOTE
Durga Chew-Bose on adapting Bonjour Tristesse to the screen
The PhotoBook Review
THE ERISKAY CONNECTION
Aaron Schuman talks to the duo about their publishing project
THE FACTORY
Marigold Warner visits Twelvebooks’s new home in east Tokyo
GRAPHIC CONTENT
Christopher Hawthorne on photography and type
Reviews of photobooks by Mike Brodie, Joaquim Paiva, Lele Saveri, and Noriko Shibuya
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Aperture magazine, founded in 1952 and based in New York City, is an international quarterly journal specializing in photography. It features photographs by established and emerging photographers, as well as artists experimenting with photo related media. Each issue is usually themed and includes writings by critics, scholars, photography practitioners, and others involved in the field of photography.
