Every cover tells a story

Inspired by reading Steve Taylor’s book on 100 Years of Magazine Covers, I have dug out the link for a project the American Society of Magazine Editors ran not so long ago to pick the most iconic covers of the past 40 years. Everyone one of them tells a story…I’ve picked one from each decade for this post:

A story by the legendary writer John Sack inspired this Esquire cover in October 1966. Sack had just become Esquire’s war correspondent in Vietnam, at a time when America had less than 100,000 troops in the country. At 33,000 words, the story was and still is the longest ever published in the magazine, and was a ‘landmark in the history of New Journalism’.

In October 1971 model Darine Stern was the first African-American to grace the cover of Playboy, doing it in some style on a bunny chair specially created by Art Designer Len Willis. Richard Fegley was the photographer.

This unbearably poignant Annie Leibovitz image was photographed just hours before Lennon was shot on Dec  8, 1980, and was used on the cover (chosen as the best cover of the last 40 years) of Rolling Stone’s tribute issue to Lennon on Jan 22, 1981.

Another classic Annie Leibovitz cover shot, this time of the naked and hugely pregnant Demi Moore. It was August 1991, the year after Ghost, and the cover helped cement Demi’s place in the early 90’s Hollywood ‘A’ list