Ryan Parker photographed the cover of Reader’s Digest’s April 2024 issue and the opening of its cover story, Small But Mighty.
The story
Small But Mighty
The cover story gathers children and teens doing remarkable things to make the world better, one act at a time. The girl on the cover is one of them, and the story opens on a second portrait of her.
- Magazine
- Reader’s Digest
- Issue
- April 2024
- Cover line
- Caring Kids Making a Difference
- Ran as
- The cover, and the cover story’s opening spread
- Words
- Claire Sibonney
- Art direction
- John Montgomery
- Photographs
- Ryan Parker
As printed
The cover, and the pages.
01Reader’s Digest, April 2024
How it got made
The brief, the room, the frame.
Reader’s Digest Canada’s art director, John Montgomery, found me through Edify in November 2023. The Christmas break split the issue’s production, so there was no layout and no story draft, just a brief and a deadline. He wanted a warm yellow and room for full-length frames, so I went up to a nine-foot roll, a yellow with a hint of orange in it.
We shot in my studio. I asked her to bring the soft toys she made for kids in hospital, and one ended up on her head in the portrait that opens the story. She didn’t know she was the cover. John asked me not to say, in case plans changed. A few weeks later he told me the magazine would close that spring, and that mine would be the last cover Reader’s Digest Canada ever ran.
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