READY, STEADY, RESET

And now for something completely different — and not a moment too soon. While we’re feeling beleaguered by the overuse of that dreadful term “new normal”, the creative geniuses at British Vogue magazine have created a series of covers for the August issue that give us a break from the vapid beauty of impossible-toachieve female perfection. Makeup, pout, shoot, airbrush!

Editor in Chief Edward Enninful commissioned 14 special covers to celebrate nature, featuring striking original images of landscapes created by some of England’s bestloved artists and most-lauded photographers.

Artists commissioned for the project were David Hockney, Nadine Ijewere, Tim Walker,

Nick Knight, Lubaina Himid, Mert Alas, David Sims, Marcus Piggott, Jamie Hawkesworth, Juergen Teller, Alasdair McLellan, Martin

Parr, David Bailey and Craig McDean.

Enninful said: “British Vogue’s August Issue, Reset, and the 20-page story ‘All

Across the Land’, is not only beautiful and poignant but highlights that at the core of everything is our planet. I hope 2020 signals a reset in our relationship to nature.”

Of all the submissions for Vogue’s online challenge, which is running in tandem with the August magazine covers, Carmen Danae’s images sparked the most heated debate, along with discussions about the future of sustainable tourism. Her images show different areas of the Samaná province in the

Dominican Republic, where her mother’s family is from, and where she’s spent years helping to clean the beaches. She says: “I hope that people who look at this image don’t see the Dominican Republic, but instead see themselves.”

The article accompanying the landscapes looks at how the coronavirus pandemic has changed our world and what we, as a species, are going to do about it. How will we “reset” to ensure that we survive into the future?

The original pieces of art — an everyday skyline or the memory of a place much missed — will be auctioned at the end of the year to raise money for Covid-19-focused charities.