Bono creates 20 covers for Vanity Fair’s African issue

Posted by Helen Lee at 7:59 pm June 7th, 2007 | 0 comments

Bono guest-edited July Africa issue of Vanity Fair, and instead of creating one cover, he chose to go with 20 covers. The cover models ranged from Warren Buffett, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Desmond Tutu, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Queen Rania of Jordan, Djimon Hounsou, Chris Rock, Muhammad Ali, Jay-Z, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Iman, to name a few.

Each subject was chosen people of their ties to Africa, with two subjects photographed ‘speaking’ to each other. Not that many were photographed together (by Annie Leibovitz of course) in the same location.

While most people would jump at the chance to be photographed by Leibovitz, celebrities, world leaders and policy makers are busy people. So the photographer flew to locations from Japan to Omaha to South Korea over the course of six weeks to produce the covers (none of which were shot in Africa, though a majority of stories inside the magazine were photographed there). Only the subjects of two covers – President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Alicia Keys and Iman – were photographed together.

Vanity Fair have also announced that they will donate $5 of every subscription purchased online in June to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

[Via WWD]