Vogue Cover Averages

I took a sample of Vogue's covers every decade and overlaid each image on top of each other, using a "Mean" stack mode. I decided to do this project "by hand" in Photoshop because I wanted to ensure alignment of each cover regardless of minor printing or paper margin differences.  (Thus the header in 1900 looks very precise, as it never changed, whereas the central illustration is an indiscriminate blur.

See the project page on Robots Reading Vogue for more details and explanations for why some years show such a clear pattern.

This work was written up in the Boston Globe.