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.

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