It is safe to say that this year’s Pirelli calendar is unlike anything they’ve produced so far. In an attempt to photograph women as they are, sans pretence, Pirelli shifted gears and roped in the doyen of photography, Annie Leibovitz.
Since its launch in 1964, Pirelli is known to feature mostly nude supermodels shot by renowned photographers.
This year, there was a dramatic shift in both subject and aesthetic.
Leibovitz turned Pirelli’s tradition of overt nudity on its head, with portraits of accomplished writers, sports stars, philanthropists, artists, and filmmakers. The full roster cuts across age and background – Rookie founder Tavi Gevinson, tennis legend Serena Williams, comedian Amy Schumer, artist/activist Yoko Ono, writer Fran Lebowitz, musician and author Patti Smith, supermodel Natalia Vodianova, chairperson of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy, Chinese actress Yao Chen, business and financial mogul Mellody Hobson, director and screenwriter Ava DuVernay, art collector and chairman of MoMA PS1 Agnes Gund with granddaughter Sadie Rain Hope-Gund, and Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat.
When Agnes Gund, the 77-year-old philanthropist and president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art got the call, she told The New York Times:
That’s odd. What’s that got to do with someone like me?
Fran Lebowitz, the 65-year-old author on the other hand thought that the call was a “joke”.
Leibovitz, the iconic photographer told Elle after the launch:
Pirelli came to me and told me they wanted to shift this year to something different. I made the suggestion that they do women performance artists or women comedians. I just thought of women I admired and I didn’t let anyone in the studio from Pirelli. It became a very strong set of very simple portraits [...] No one was supposed to look like they tried in these pictures.
Like Playboy, Pirelli’s seems to be lending real substance to the theory of non-objectification of female sexuality.
Social media was set ablaze with praises for the newest calendar.
Here’s how the backstage action went during this epic shoot.
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