21 stars gathered to make history with Vanity Vair and 20 Different covers of the July Africa issue! Photographed by the famed Annie Leibovitz...covers include Oprah, Jay Z, Alicia Keys, Bono, President Bush, and Iman among many others!
For this special issue, Graydon Carter, Bono, and Annie Leibovitz collaborated on the unprecedented set of 20 covers to show a prominent group of people having a "conversation" about Africa. "It's a visual chain letter," says Leibovitz, "spreading the message from person to person to person." Among them: a supermodel who fled Somalia with her family 37 years ago, a senator whose grandfather and father are buried in Africa, an actor who makes an annual return to a tiny village in Benin to see his family, a music superstar who adopted a child from Malawi, a former boxing champion who visited Ghana when no American sports figure had gone there before. And more—including a poet, an archbishop, a queen, a president, a rapper, a comedian, a talk-show host, and billionaire philanthropists. Leibovitz put together the 21 subjects in what was, she says, "a little like having a dinner party and trying to seat people next to certain people." She adds, "These are incredible people of our time, involved in this effort to make Africa better, to get Africa self-sufficient, and to try to get rid of aids on the continent." Let the conversation continue.