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| © Steven Meisel |
| Click photo to see the winning images and honorable mentions. |
Madonna has worked with a handful of photographers throughout her career to create a carefully calculated collection of iconography. Early on she collaborated with Herb Ritts, who polished her photographic image to a high sheen, establishing Madonna as a force in culture and fashion. Over the years, Bruce Weber, Mario Testino, and others helped her shape-shift her identity, always being careful to place her persona just outside the bounds of middle-class tastes but close enough so that her every move could be witnessed by her followers. Such is her genius. Her most notable -- and most interesting -- work has been done with Steven Meisel, who photographed her for the cover of her 1984 album, Like a Virgin, and for a series of projects in the early 1990s. The most infamous of those was the 1992 book, Sex, made at the moment when Madonna's persona was veering from neo-punk to neo-Marquis de Sade.
Reuniting for the cover of Vanity Fair's May 2008 Green Issue, the pair updated Madonna's cultural status once again, turning the 49-year-old soon-to-be single mother into a lingerie-clad warrior, guarding the globe through the sheer power of her sexuality. In Meisel's beautifully rendered pictures, the Material Girl becomes an Earth MILF, demonstrating again the power of imagery to create seductive fantasy. Environmentalism aside, the issue coincided with the release of Madonna's Hard Candy album, and readers were invited to explore the hardworking entertainer's personal high-wire act.
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