Aperture No. 263 – Secrets (Summer 2026)

Aperture No. 263 is the Secrets issue. It looks at the hidden forces that shape our lives and what we see, from state control and voyeurism to coded gestures and interior worlds. In an age of oversharing and eroded privacy, a well-guarded secret has a new value: a way to opt out of a system that wants to know everything about you. The photographers in this issue show how secrets can create intimacy, build solidarity, become a form of play, drive a whodunit, or resist language altogether. It includes previously unpublished work by Sarah Charlesworth and Alix Cléo Roubaud.

The features cover the elusive exposures of Alix Cléo Roubaud, Sarah Charlesworth's art of deception, and Iñaki Bonillas playing hide-and-seek with Barragán, a titan of Mexican modernism. Polly Brown decodes secret handshakes and gestures, and her series Secret Gestures is on the cover. Taryn Simon talks with Christopher Glazek about elevating investigative journalism to high art. Li Zhensheng risked it all to capture the brutal reality of Mao Zedong's China, and Merry Alpern's work offers lessons in voyeurism. John Divola searches for the truth on a Hollywood soundstage. Other features cover the fantastical rise of Szilveszter Makó, a series of 1930s publications that double as police dossiers, and Estelle Hanania's recreational monsters.

Nick Knight writes the Curriculum column, and Andrew Durbin writes on the intertwined lives of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. The PhotoBook Review has Aaron Schuman in conversation with Paul Schiek about TBW Books, Noa Lin getting lost in the stacks at Arcana: Books on the Arts in Los Angeles, Iva Dixit on Blommers & Schumm's mischievous fashion photography, and reviews of photobooks by Andrea Modica, Sarah van Rij, Lionel Wendt and others.