Aperture Releases Summer Issue “Liberated Threads: Stories of Black Style” with Guest Editor Tanisha C. Ford

New York, June 5, 2025—Today, Aperture releases “Liberated Threads: Stories of Black Style,” an issue showcasing image makers around the world who explore fashion as a language of resistance, refusal, and joy.

“Liberated Threads” is guest edited by the scholar and researcher Tanisha C. Ford and builds upon her eponymous 2015 book, which examines how women throughout the African diaspora embraced fashion and beauty culture as an activist tool in the 1960s and 1970s. Extending this history into the present, Ford has curated a selection of portfolios, essays, and interviews featuring Black artists who remix, reimagine, and, in some cases, reject the aesthetic and politics of what she calls the “soul style” of the twentieth century.

“I wanted to bring together artists who see style as a way to ask questions about embodiment, pleasure, and political consciousness,” Ford says. “I hope readers find much to discover in their work, which I think exemplifies the ingenuity and capaciousness of the Black imagination.”

In “Liberated Threads,” Solange Knowles interviews Melina Matsoukas about her visionary career spanning Hollywood, fashion, and music, and her work to cultivate nonexploitative models of inclusion in the arts. Darnell L. Moore sits down with the influential stylist Yashua Simmons to talk about the evolution of his eye and how he’s navigated the various pressures of the fashion industry. Ja’Tovia Gary and Fatima Jamal converse about the stakes of self-representation and creative courage, and how they use the camera to subvert the gaze placed on the Black female body. Amy DuBois Barnett reflects on her time editing Honey, a hip-hop fashion magazine for women that gave rein to photographers such as Marc Baptiste, Piper Carter, and Renée Cox. And Kobby Ankomah Graham weighs the extraordinary, sinuous legacy of the Malian portraitist Seydou Keïta—this issue’s cover artist, and the subject of an upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum—whose studio became a site of postcolonial identity construction and celebration in midcentury Bamako.

Among the portfolios in “Liberated Threads,” Devin Allen documents everyday life on the streets of Baltimore, and the Ivorian photographer Nuits Balnéaires intimately chronicles an ever-widening circle of friends and models throughout West Africa. In London, Silvia Rosi blends self-portraiture with the family album to inhabit the experiences of her emigrant parents, and Liz Johnson Artur vibes out to the backstage energy of fashion shows by African-born designers such as Feben and Mowalola. And stylist Nikki Nelms lifts Black hair to the level of conceptual art, creating do’s that play muse to photographers, including Renell Medrano, Ming Smith, and Lorna Simpson. These portfolios are introduced by writers Rikki Byrd, Gazelle Mba, madison moore, Vanessa Peterson, and Tiana Reid.

Together, these artists and writers spark a bold conversation about style’s ability to create possibilities for solidarity and selfhood today. As Ford writes in her guest editor’s note: “I hope this issue offers a metalanguage for people who are trying to make sense of the world. Who refuse to accept current conditions. Who dare to imagine a free, Black future.”

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Inside the Issue…
Columns & 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

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

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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.

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from 7G Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Documentary Arts, Ford Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Marta Heflin Foundation, Ishibashi Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Henry Luce Foundation, Mailman Foundation, MurthyNAYAK Foundation, Grace Jones Richardson Trust, San Francisco Foundation, Thomas R. Schiff Foundation, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Stuart B. Cooper and R. L. Besson, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, Thomas and Susan Dunn, Agnes Gund, Michael Sonnenfeldt, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts, with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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Press Contact
Lauren Van Natten, +1.212.946.7151, publicity@aperture.org