Photo: courtesy Pirelli.
The annual Pirelli calendar is shaking things up for its 2016 edition. Instead of scantily clad models, photographer Annie Leibovitz will be capturing fully dressed female artists, musicians, writers, and sports stars.
“I started to think about the roles that women play, women who have achieved something. I wanted to make a classic set of portraits,” Leibovitz said in a statement. “I thought that the women should look strong but natural and I decided to keep it a very simple exercise of shooting in the studio. This calendar is so completely different. It is a departure,” she says. “The idea was not to have any pretense in these pictures and be very straightforward.”
Tennis champion Serena Williams will be joined with Renaissance woman Patti Smith, nascent media mogul Tavi Gevinson, artists Yoko Ono and Shirin Neshat, and writer Fran Lebowitz, among others.
Last year, the Italian tire company released a calendar featuring leather-clad models including the now ubiquitious Gigi Hadid, Anna Ewers, and Sasha Luss, as well as well-known standards such as Joan Smalls and Adriana Lima. Russian model Natalia Vodianova, who appeared in the 2015 calendar, will appear again this year.
The upcoming edition was shot this May and will be released in November. This is Leibovitz’s second time working with Pirelli; in 2000, she shot French model Laetitia Casta sans clothes.
See some behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot below.
Serena Williams.
Photo: courtesy Pirelli.
Tavi Gevinson.
Photo: courtesy Pirelli.
Fran Lebowitz.
Photo: courtesy Pirelli.
Yao Chen.
Photo: courtesy Pirelli.
Yoko Ono.
Photo: courtesy Pirelli.
Shirin Neshat.
Photo: courtesy Pirelli.