Nice of you to point out the only picture that's changed (been censored) over the years.

Indeed the naked women behind the red veil (symbolizing the wind - the element Air >> difformed picture frame) has been modified so that one can't see the body over it since the 90's.

BTW, the frontcover symolizes the Fire element (with the burnt cardboard frame) and the back cover symbolizes Earth element (sand seeping through the crack in the frame), while the Water element leaks through the hole in the cardboard frame of the lyric/credit sleeve. The same four elements symbolized on the sticker with the two hands shaking. 

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Regarding the "four elements" theme, has anyone considered:

Water = Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Air/Wind = Welcome to the Machine

Fire = Have a Cigar

Earth = Wish You Were Here 

outside the fact that Fire is useful to smoke a cigar, I don't see the link

How do you figure? 

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Interesting take here! I've been listening to this masterpiece since I can remember and I've never thought or heard about this theory. Although I'd say Air/Wind would be Wish You Were Here and Earth would be Welcome to the machine. 

I've owned and loved the album for almost 40 years, and I've always wondered why the "four elements" theme figured so prominently in the album's packaging if it had nothing to do with the music and lyrics. Somewhere along the line, I somehow formulated (without any "foreign substances") that there must be a connection between the four song titles and the four elements, and came up with the above. To spell it all out would make a ridiculously long-winded post that would be laughingly dismissed as just someone's "personal interpretation". Let's just say it's nowhere near as nutty as the Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz theory.

mmmhhh!!!!... IMHO, one shouldn't read too much into it in this case.

Hypgnosis' great-themed projects abounded and were proposed to other bands if not accepted by the original artiste it was proposed to.

- Already the WYWH pictures themselves, only two of them can apply to the music: the burning handshake (both to WttM and HaC tracks) and the back cover (the disc being Floyd's and its absence-theme for SOY & WYWH tracks >> but even that could've been adapted with Zep's Icarus-image Swan Song label). 

- FTM, that back cover seems right out of Bad Company's Desolation Angel shots (big white frames helping of course). 

- As for the other WYWH piccies, the Diver and Red Veil pictures don't seem to have any link, though one could really stretch it (diving in drugs) and wind noises >> but that would be more suited to One Of These Days or Echoes.

- As for the "Handshake spaceship"  sticker, which also became the label of the vinyl with different colours, I'm +/- sure it came after the blind black wrap decision and it was also applied on the disc itself. 

I'm not saying that Storm and Auby proposed the WYWH project to some other band before-hand, but had Floyd turned it down, I'm sure Zeppelin would've picked it up the next year instead of the crummy Presence concept (another white-framed project). 

Of coursed they (Hypgnosis) couldn't have placed Tormato (the Yes Tor thing) to Genesis or Zep, but one can easily imagine GFTO triple-fold artwork adapted to Floyd or Genesis albums>> less likely to UFO or 10CC, though. I could see Tormato's idea to UFO, though. 

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It's total psychedelic progressivism!