Silver Lining: Inside Carlos Nazario's Self-Published Book, Launched at Dover Street Market New York

Stylist Carlos Nazario published Silver Lining in September 2026, a limited-edition print publication four years in the making. Independently published and entirely self-funded, it brings together photography, art and writing on beauty, identity, culture and the human condition. In New York, Dover Street Market at 160 Lexington Avenue in Kips Bay scheduled a launch panel for Friday, October 23, from 4 to 6 pm, with Paloma Elsesser, Alex Consani and Jawara Wauchope announced as speakers and Nazario moderating.

On Instagram, Nazario describes himself as a publishing person who has spent nearly twenty years working in and at magazines, learning from legendary titles and editors. He had long wanted a space to explore the people and subjects that intrigued him exactly as he felt them. The book began about four years ago as a way to hold a moment in time, gathering the artists, photographers, writers and thinkers whose work had moved and challenged him.

The title comes from John Milton, from lines about a sable cloud turning its silver lining on the night: the visual effect of light tracing a bright edge around a darker form. Nazario writes that he has always loved the idea of searching for light within darkness. Ferdinando Verderi designed the book, and the text on its white cover appears only when exposed to light.

The contributor list is deep. Photographic essays come from David Sims, Tyler Mitchell, Jack Davison, Oliver Hadlee Pearch, Pieter Hugo, Thaddé Comar, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Harley Weir and Gabriel Moses, with Alex Consani, Anok Yai, Paloma Elsesser and Vittoria Ceretti also contributing photo essays. Conversations pair Ming Smith with Solange Knowles, Arthur Jafa with Erykah Badu, and Nazario with Efna Plaza-Merritt. There are selected works by Lauren Halsey, Nate Lowman and Derrick Adams, poetry by Amanda Gorman, and Preach, an original visual series by Carrie Mae Weems.

Since publication, Nazario has been introducing the stories one by one. Beautiful Black Men, made over four years with Luis Alberto Rodriguez, is a black-and-white study of Black men's bodies that sets aside imposed ideas of manhood in favor of softness, vulnerability and tenderness. Nazario writes that the process helped him find a deeper respect for his own body.

In Time, with Tyler Mitchell, is about the brevity of youth and the fleeting beauty of a time when everything feels possible; the two have spent years portraying young Black people with dignity, tenderness and optimism. Los Borinqueños, with Oliver Hadlee Pearch, took Nazario home to Puerto Rico for a week with family and friends old and new, a way, he says, to show his new family his old one and to platform his island.

Pieter Hugo traveled with Nazario to Mumbai to photograph members of the hijra community, who hold a centuries-old place in South Asian culture and are legally recognized in India as a third gender; the pictures run with an essay by Jerry Johnson, An Architecture of Survival. Bureau of Imagination, shot by Gabriel Moses, documents the first artisanal pieces from BOI, a new project by Fran and Alex, worn by some of Nazario's favorite muses.

Nazario celebrated the release in Paris in early October at Sant Ambroeus, and has pointed readers to Gourmet Delico for presale copies. Dover Street Market, the multi-brand store developed by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons with another branch in Tokyo's Ginza, was a natural New York setting for a book that moves between fashion, photography, art and literature.