Historic & Manipulated

Vanity Fair magazine’s recent covers (20 different covers to be exact) are touted by the editors as “historic.” Yet only two of the Annie Leibovitz covers are real, the other 18 were Photoshopped in post production.

My problem is with the word “Historic” being used to describe the images and the covers. While the covers are well done (what do you expect from Annie Leibovitz) they are hardly historic. Historic would have been to have all the subjects together and having a dialogue during the shoot. It will be interesting to see how Vanity Fair words the image description for each cover. Will the word “illustration” appear?

The idea by guest editor Bono of U2 fame was to create a visual link of important actors involved in advocating for the African continent. Muhammad Ali, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, George Clooney, Madonna, Brad Pitt and Desmond Tutu are just a few of the famous faces on the covers. Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts of the Washington Post quote Leibovitz as saying, “These are more photo illustrations than photographs, but the point was to unite people for a common purpose.” Leibovitz traveled the world to track everyone down and get the singular images that would later be combined. Only the subjects of two covers, President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Alicia Keys and Iman, were photographed together.