Janet Jackson

Sex isn't just fire and heat, it's natural beauty," said Janet Jackson in the 1993 Rolling Stone cover story that featured this notorious photo. "Good sex is also linked with losing yourself, releasing, using your body to get out of your body." Ten years before her wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl, Jackson was shot by Patrick Demarchelier, nearly exposing both breasts. The picture came from a Miami session for her fifth record, janet.; the album cover is simply a close crop of Jackson's head from the same photo. "It was just an idea that came to me when I was shooting Poetic Justice," she says, referring to the 1993 John Singleton film in which she starred opposite Tupac Shakur. "I wanted it to be very simple, clean and different."

Though Jackson won't say whose hands those are, Demarchelier notes that they belonged to choreographer Rene Elizondo, now her ex-husband. The rest of the photos were taken outdoors, but for this one it was just Demarchelier, Jackson and Elizondo in the studio. "[Rene] was a skinny guy," Demarchelier says. "He just sloped down behind her." Jackson admits it wasn't quite that simple to make it look like Elizondo's body had disappeared: "We had a little computer help."