Pirelli Calendar 2017 by Peter Lindbergh

The 2017 Pirelli Calendar, created by one of the world’s top photographers, Peter Lindbergh, was presented in Paris on November 29. The 2017 edition, which follows on from the one by Annie Leibovitz in 2016, sees the German master become the only photographer to have been asked to produce the Pirelli Calendar for the third time. It was Peter who shot the Calendar of 1996 in the El Mirage desert in California, and the one of 2002 at the studios of Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles. In 2014, it was again Lindbergh, together with Patrick Demarchelier, who took the photographs to celebrate 50 years of the Calendar, which was first launched in 1964.

Lindbergh has chosen the title “Emotional” in order to emphasize how the idea behind his photos was “to create a calendar not around perfect bodies, but on sensitivity and emotion, stripping down to the very soul of the sitters, who thus become more nude than naked.”

In order to convey his idea of natural beauty and femininity, Lindbergh has portrayed 14 internationally renowned actresses. They are Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara, Helen Mirren, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlotte Rampling, Lea Seydoux, Uma Thurman, Alicia Vikander, Kate Winslet, Robin Wright and Zhang Ziyi. He has also included Anastasia Ignatova, professor of Political Theory at MGIMO – Moscow State University of International Relations. These choices once again reveal Lindbergh’s love of the cinema which makes the Cité du Cinéma in Saint Denis, one of Europe’s most important film studios, the natural setting for the traditional gala dinner where the new calendar has been presented.