Sydney Poitier! Christine McVie!
Mikhail Gorbachev! Taylor Hawkins!
And Chris Barker.
You know the first four names: They’re among the famous folk who died in 2022.
Chris Barker, thankfully, is still among the living. An award-winning artist and designer, he has created an annual visual salute to the dead since 2016, using The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper cover as his framework.
This is Barker’s first release for 2022. If it’s anything like the previous years, he’ll be creating revisions of it for the next 31 days.
James Caan. Louise Fletcher.
Angela Lansbury! Howard Hesseman!
For each demise, he has to find the most appropriate image for the person – in character? young? old? – then devise a way to fit it in. Then, someone else passes away and Barker needs to figure out how to present him/her .
(In Barker’s first year of doing this, Carrie Fisher died on Dec. 27. Her mom Debbie Reynolds died the very next day. Both are included in the 2016 presentation, in a totally appropriate way).
And now, 2022: Queen Elizabeth! Nichelle Nichols!
“It is an absolute gut-wrencher this year,” Barker said on Twitter.
Take some time with this. Enlarge it. Scroll around. See how many people you recognize right off. Likely you’ll know the role even if you can’t remember the name.
Chris has posted a guide to the 151 people and topics (you’ll definitely need to enlarge this one):
Below is his first Pepper cover, from 2016.
More from Chris Barker:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christhebarker/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/christhebarker