The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

The cover of Lauryn Hill's only solo studio album shows her face as if it had been carved into the wooden top of a school desk, the kind of carving bored students scratch in during class. It fits an album whose interludes are recordings of a teacher talking with a real classroom of students.

The photographer Eric Johnson took Hill back to Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, the school she had attended, and shot her in classrooms, corridors and on a school bus. Johnson said he wanted something chic that regular people could also identify with. From that shoot, Hill picked one of his images of her face and had it turned into the desk carving. The package also credits photography by Marc Baptiste, with art direction by Lauryn Hill herself and Erwin Gorostiza.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was released in August 1998, and in 1999 it became the first hip-hop album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year. The carved face has become one of the most recognisable images in music.