Newsstand Junkies: Photography, Fashion, and Magazine Culture in 1990s New York
with Dietmar Busse, Mickey Boardman, and Jeppe Ugelvig
Géza, 306 Maujer
In the early 1990s, following the success of his debut story, Dietmar Busse’s photographs quickly became a fixture of New York City’s fashion newsstands. Subsequent commissions included a notable feature for Paper magazine under the direction of editor Mickey Boardman. Shortly thereafter, Busse began contributing to The New York Times Magazine, signed with an agent, and expanded his practice to encompass portraiture and fashion editorials for various publications, all distributed via the city’s network of newsstands in sidewalk booths, storefronts, and subway stations across the city. Amant’s current exhibition Dietmar Busse: Fairytales 1991-1999 presents a curated selection of Busse’s formative work from this period.
On the occasion of Dietmar Busse’s exhibition, this roundtable conversation with Mickey Boardman and Jeppe Ugelvig will address the fashion scene of New York in the 1990s, the work of fashion photographers during the analogue era of photography and its connection to fashion advertising from myriad angles. In particular, the panel will consider the pre-9/11 downtown scene of art and fashion hybridity, with the turn of the millennium seemingly being a crucial cut-off point to a productive period.
Mickey Boardman is Director of Special Projects at the newly relaunched Paper Magazine. He was previously Editorial Director and has worked at the magazine since 1993. He wrote a body positivity column called Fat and All That. He’s worked on iconic covers with the likes of Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Christina Aguilera and more. He’s also Creative Director of Playgirl. For 15 years, he’s been on the board of Citta, a charity that builds schools, clinics and women’s centers in India and Nepal. He’s appeared as a pop culture and royal history expert on CNN, VH-1, A & E, Bravo and E! networks. In 2021 he launched a clothing line, Mr Mickey, with the shopping platform Live Rocket.
Jeppe Ugelvig is a curator, historian, and cultural critic based in New York City. He is a current Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Cruz, where his research focuses on artistic responses to consumerism in the global 20th century. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Viscose, a journal for fashion criticism and analysis. His first book Fashion Work: 25 Years of Art in Fashion was published by Damiani in 2020.
Dietmar Busse is an artist based in New York. His work has appeared in magazines such as The New York Times magazine, Paper magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Interview, Elle, The London Independent and Spanish Vogue. He has developed campaigns for Matsuda and documented runway shows for Bernadette Corporation, among many others. Recent exhibitions include the solo show Garten at Fierman (2023) and Labor of Love at Rachel Uffner Gallery (2023), both in New York. Dietmar’s second monograph Songs for Birds and the Lonely was released by Palermo Publishing in September 2024.