Aperture No. 259 - Summer 2025

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.

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Issue Details

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.

 

Format: Paperback / softback
Number of pages: 152
Publication date: 2025-06-01
Measurements: 8.5 x 10.6 inches
ISBN: 9781597115803


Table Of Contents

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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