A trip through Carlos Nazario’s ‘urgent, beautiful, inspiring’ visual world

There are certain names in fashion that, once you start paying attention, seem to crop up everywhere. Carlos Nazario is one of them. Over the past decade, the stylist has become a familiar presence behind some of the industry’s most recognisable images, with a point of view that extends beyond the work itself. But while styling has made him a familiar name, his new book, Silver Lining, four years in the making, offers a more personal look at the ideas, people and perspectives that have shaped his vision along the way.

Having got his start working for legendary British stylist Joe McKenna, Carlos Nazario was introduced early on to the possibilities of publishing beyond the usual fashion platforms. McKenna, who also founded the seminal 90s publication Joe’s Magazine, created a space to explore his own interests and perspectives beyond the fashion titles and brands he worked for, bringing together contributors from across photography, art and culture. It’s an idea that clearly resonated with Nazario, a self-described “publication person”, who was inspired to create something similarly personal with Silver Lining. “I was obviously very inspired by him,” he explains. “But I knew that if I ever were to do something even similar to that, it would need to be very personal. It would need to tackle topics that myself and my vortex of like-minded people thought were urgent, beautiful and inspiring.”

In the book’s opening, he reflects on the difficulty of getting the project off the ground, writing, “I allowed imposter syndrome, fear of failure, procrastination, or the prioritisation of other obligations to prevent me from making this thing.” Now that it’s here, Silver Lining brings together photography, writing and conversations that give space to stories often left out of the picture. The book also features photography by an impressive roster of image-makers, including Tyler Mitchell, Luis Alberto Rodrigo, Oliver Hadlee Pearch, David Sims, Harley Weir, Jack Davison, Gabriel Moses, Fumiko Imano, Thadee Comar and Pieter Hugo. Elsewhere, contributions from artists Carrie Mae Weems, Lauren Halsey and Derrick Adams sit alongside ‘The Girls’, a behind-the-scenes film documenting fashion week through the eyes of models Alex Consani, Anok Yai, Paloma Elsesser and Vittoria Ceretti.

Conceived in the aftermath of a particularly difficult period following the pandemic, the book came out of a feeling that something was missing from the images dominating the cultural conversation. “I felt that there was a sense of apathy that felt pervasive. As a result of everything that is going on in our world and the constant dialogue around such tragic and traumatic events, I think everyone was looking for a little bit of inspiration. I certainly felt down and a bit dejected and a bit unsure what my voice meant, if anything.” Having witnessed the conversations and proposed changes that followed the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, he was also conscious of how little had shifted in practice. “It was important to continue to make space and take up space so that the overarching visual language of this moment didn’t become something that didn’t feel truly representative of the type of beauty that exists in our world right now.”

One of the earliest stories to make it into the book, Beautiful Black Boys, centres around a series of nude portraits, photographed by Luis Alberto Rodrigo. More than just documenting bodies, the portraits are a sensitive look at many individuals who, at the time, were amidst a range of personal experiences, from surgery and accidents to gender transition. “The process of photographing someone nude is obviously just incredibly intimate, but really exhausting emotionally. I think especially if you’re an empathetic person, it’s like someone’s quite literally exposing their self to you, their soul and their spirit and being so vulnerable.” That vulnerability demanded care, but it also raised a question of authorship. Throughout history, there has been a long record of Black male nude photography, taken almost exclusively by white male photographers. “It’s another term that I hate because it’s overused, but representation is hugely important as is ownership over our stories,” Nazario explains. “Luis and I felt that was something that was hugely important, and from a selfish standpoint, very therapeutic for both of us.”

‘Great adversity and the challenge that’s associated with it, changes you. It forces you to think about things differently. It forces you to think about resources and mortality differently and what your place is here,’ – Carlos Nazario

Alongside the images, Silver Lining makes room for essays by the likes of Darnell L. Moore and Jerry Johnson, as well as head-to-head conversations between Erykah Badu and Arthur Jafa, Solange Knowles and Ming Smith, Paloma Elsesser and Alex Consani, and Nazario and his grandmother. Putting those contributors together was one of the most involved parts of the process. “It was like doing a seating chart at a dinner party where you instinctively know, oh, these people are going to be great together, but you don’t know how great,” Nazario explains, speaking on bringing the conversations to life. Despite the ongoing discourse around the decline in interest in written text in print media, Nazario wanted the writing to have the same consideration as the visuals. “I think it’s true that people read less, but I don’t think it’s true that there’s any less of an appetite for reading. In fact, I do think that there is a renewed sense of hunger for information and for information that comes with an authoritative tone and with a set of reviews and references that feels considered. So for me, I really wanted to ensure that this book was as smart as it looked.”

It is often said that some of the best art comes out of difficult times, when the world around us forces us to look more closely at ourselves and the things we might otherwise avoid. For Nazario, making work in these moments is a way of responding without having to offer easy answers. “I think that great adversity and the challenge that’s associated with it, changes you. It forces you to think about things differently. It forces you to think about resources and mortality differently and what your place is here.” He is careful, too, to recognise that hardship is not new for many of the people involved. “For a lot of the people who made this work and a lot of the people that were featured in the work, specifically people of colour, times have been hard forever. It’s not a newfound, terrible thing that one day we woke up and we are being mistreated. The political conflicts and wars that we talk about so much now did not happen yesterday. These are things that have been happening for decades, and now we’re talking about them. I think being able to respond, react and emote through the work is going to result in something that feels a little bit more inspired and urgent.”

That awareness is part of what makes Silver Lining work. Its more imaginative moments sit alongside stories and conversations that speak directly to the realities of the present, without one cancelling out the other. The book makes space for fantasy and hope, but never at the expense of acknowledging what is happening around us. Perhaps that is what gives its optimism a little more weight.

Silver Lining is available to order here now.