Renegades by Bruce Weber

Bruce Weber's 2005 editorial for W Magazine, "The Renegades," captured a specific downtown moment before it disappeared entirely. Shot in New York City as a commissioned editorial for W's first art issue, the shoot brought together Scottish supermodel Stella Tennant with artists Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley—two figures who would come to define the mid-2000s downtown art scene before Snow's death in 2009. Styled by Camilla Nickerson, then senior fashion editor at W, the shoot reflects Weber's decades-long fascination with American youth culture, restlessness, and the blur between high fashion and underground rebellion.

This series was made for W Magazine's inaugural art issue under founding creative director Dennis Freedman, who had spent nearly two decades transforming the publication into what he called "a punky little sister" to Vogue—a place where photographers could "get weirder and tell more of a story." Freedman's philosophy of putting photography firmly before fashion created the perfect context for Weber's documentary-style approach. 2005 also marked a crucial moment for fashion magazines themselves—the industry was at peak cultural influence with $10.7 billion in total revenue, right before the digital shift would begin to erode print's dominance. This editorial captured that last moment when magazines still had the cultural power and budgets to commission ambitious work like this.