As you might have heard a few months back, singer/sunglasses-wearer/world savior Bono served as guest editor of Vanity Fair's July issue–an issue whose mission is to raise awareness about how everyone is aware that Africa exists, or to give shout-outs to a whole continent, or something like that. How? By taking lots of pretty pictures of celebrities and politicians talking:
The 21 people who put their famous faces to work for this issue say it all. Annie Leibovitz paired them up on 20 different covers–shout-outs for the challenge, the promise, and the future of Africa.
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."
In other words, it's the most awkward game of telephone ever.
Like Don-Cheadle-and-Barack-Obama-stuck-in-the-corner
-at-a-cocktail-party kind of awkward.
Or, Madonna-slinking-along-the-face-of-a-sleeping-Maya-Angelou kind of awkward.
(Honestly, Madonna. If you have to try this hard to look sensual next to a septugenarian poet, then just stop trying.)
You can marvel at the weirdness of all 20 covers
here (don't worry, other stars of the upcoming super-fun-time heist flick Ocean's 13, like Brad Pitt and George Clooney, are there), but my favorite link in the telephone chain is this cover of Chris Rock and Warren Buffet:
In most of the other photographs, the message being passed along is a fact about Africa, but in this photo it's literally, "Got any stock tips?"
Yea, awareness!