Following on from July’s cover story that celebrated our frontline workers, British Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful has enlisted the UK’s greatest artists and photographers, including Loughran Gallery favourites David Hockney and Tim Walker, to create 14 special covers for the August issue.
In the first project of its kind for British Vogue, each artist was asked to present UK landscapes that they hold dear in the series that explores the theme of reset.
The original prints – which include everyday skylines and memories of much-missed places also by Nadine Ijewere, Nick Knight, Lubaina Himid, Mert Alas, David Sims, Marcus Piggott, Jamie Hawkesworth, Juergen Teller, Alasdair McLellan, Martin Parr, David Bailey and Craig McDean – will be auctioned off in aid of Covid-19 relief charities later this year.
Edward Enninful OBE said: “British Vogue’s August Issue, Reset, and the 20-page story 'All Across the Land', is not only beautiful and poignant, but also highlights that at the core of everything is our planet. I very much hope 2020 signals a reset in our relationship to nature.”
Hockney shares his personal view of East Yorkshire in a 2006 oil painting of late spring in the village of Kilham, while Tim Walker’s hopeful cover was taken in April of this year at the photographer’s home in Hackney, east London and depicts blossoms pushing through a grey concrete wall. Fashion photographer Nadine Ijewere’s impressive image was captured on the “serene and calming” Isle of Skye while on location for another project in 2017. She captured the image on her iPhone.
In her accompanying essay for the cover story, 'All Across the Land', Helen Macdonald adds: “The familiar patterns of our lives have been broken, the future is unknowable, and all of us are searching for signs and wonders, for reassurance, for hope, for things that make sense to us when everything seems desolate. We are beginning to view nature through new eyes.
“I have been surprised by the sensuousness that nature has given me: the green fragrance of lanes near my home, the brush of wind on skin, the pleasure of planting and watering. Without human contact, it’s all I have, but it feels, right now, enough. In lockdown many of us have rediscovered gardening, or found ourselves focusing on the wellbeing of houseplants on our windowsills.
“Just as the pandemic has led us to discover new ways of working and living, in its continuing darkness we are learning to reforge our relationship with nature, quietly turning it into a thing of fierce and enduring tenderness.”