Aperture Releases Issue No. 263: “Secrets”

New York, June 4, 2026—This summer, Aperture magazine presents “Secrets,” an issue exploring the hidden forces that shape our lives and what we see—from state control and intelligence-gathering to voyeurism and coded gestures.

What power does a secret hold in an age of relentless visibility, when we’re pressured to perform and share our lives constantly? “Secrets” abounds with clues, even if disclosure isn’t always the end game. In Mexico City, Iñaki Bonillas casts a gimlet eye on the nooks, crannies, and closets of the Estudio Barragán, exploring how memory becomes embedded in architecture and art. Estelle Hanania documents European costuming traditions, exploring the ritual catharsis of transforming oneself through monstrous disguise. And in Los Angeles, John Divola searches for truth on the empty sets of The X-Files.

“I’ve never been looking to expose, I’ve been looking carefully to understand,” Taryn Simon says in a career-spanning interview conducted ahead of her major retrospective this fall at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Simon—whose work has consistently pulled back the curtain on the invisible structures that shape everyday life—speaks to how photographs have always existed in a kind of gap between revelation and concealment.

Yechen Zhao contributes an essay on the work of Li Zhensheng, who documented the Cultural Revolution while hiding thousands of negatives beneath his floorboards to evade state confiscation. Emily LaBarge writes on the legacy of voyeurism in photography, looking particularly at artists, including Sophie Calle and Merry Alpern, who have pushed the boundaries of public and private life. And in Milan, Chiara Bardelli Nonino profiles the fashion photographer Szilveszter Makó, a fast-rising star whose private worlds have become a viral sensation. The issue also features previously unpublished work by Sarah Charlesworth and Alix Cléo Roubaud, who both left behind enigmatic bodies of images shrouded in open-ended questions.

An exclusively commissioned series by the London-based photographer Polly Brown documents secret hand gestures used across professions, from waiters to royals. The cover features Stag Do, a photograph of a signal British airline stewardesses use to warn colleagues that a bachelor party is on board.

In an age of oversharing and eroded privacy, a well-guarded secret takes on a new currency, a means of opting out of a system that wants to know everything about you. The photographers featured in this issue show how secrets can forge intimacy, create solidarity among workers, become a form of play, propel a riveting whodunit, or resist language altogether.

–
Inside the Issue…
Columns & Features

AGENDA
Triennial of Photography Hamburg, Harold Edgerton, Lucas Samaras, Camille Vivier

VIEWFINDER
Danielle Jackson on the misdevelopment of Larry Clark’s Tulsa

SPOTLIGHT
Chris Wiley on Aaryan Sinha’s iconoclastic views of India

REDUX
Dan Piepenbring on Rosalind Fox Solomon’s Eggleston Album

CURRICULUM
Nick Knight on Alexander McQueen, Constantin Brancusi, and The Fountainhead

ENDNOTE
Andrew Durbin on the intertwined lives of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek

EDITORS’ NOTE
Secrets

DARK ROOMS
The elusive exposures of Alix Cléo Roubaud
Lou Stoppard

BARRAGÁN’S CLOSETS
Iñaki Bonillas plays hide-and-seek with a titan of Mexican modernism
Ana Karina Zatarain

SIGNS & SIGNALS
Polly Brown decodes secret handshakes and gestures
Thessaly La Force

OUT OF SIGHT
Taryn Simon elevates investigative journalism to high art
A conversation with Christopher Glazek

WITNESS
Li Zhensheng risked it all to capture the brutal reality of Mao Zedong’s China
Yechen Zhao

PERFECT STRANGERS
Merry Alpern’s lessons in voyeurism
Emily LaBarge

THE X-FILES
John Divola searches for the truth on a Hollywood soundstage
Chloe Wyma

ACADEMY OF SECRETS
Sarah Charlesworth’s art of deception
Brad Phillips

INSIDE THE BOX
The fantastical rise of Szilveszter Makó
Chiara Bardelli Nonino

PRIVATE EYES
A series of 1930s publications doubles as police dossiers
David Campany

UNKNOWN PLEASURES
Estelle Hanania’s recreational monsters
Seb Emina

SMELLS LIKE PRINT
Aaron Schuman speaks with Paul Schiek about TBW Books

LOS ANGELES STORY
Noa Lin gets lost in the stacks at Arcana: Books on the Arts

DOUBLE DUTCH
Iva Dixit on Blommers & Schumm’s mischievous fashion photography

Reviews of photobooks by Andrea Modica, Sarah van Rij, Lionel Wendt, and more

–

Support has been provided by members of Aperture’s Magazine Council: Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, Susan and Thomas Dunn, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, and Michael W. Sonnenfeldt, MUUS Collection.

–

About Aperture

Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Press Contact
Lauren Van Natten, publicity@aperture.org