 "From Amy Schumer, Yoko Ono to Serena Williams: The 2016 Pirelli Calendar is unlike any other so far")
The
2016 Pirelli Calendar
has an established legacy of holding fetish themed shoots over the years, with established supermodels like Adriana Lima, Joan Smalls, Gigi Hadid, Isabeli Fontana. But this year its very different with renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz who also shot the 2000 calendar. The 2016 edition is intense, symbolic and powerful instead of the usual flippant shooting with bare sequence of scantily clad women. The team thought of focusing on new aesthetics — talent of the subjects, what they constitute of and what makes them whom they are. [caption id=“attachment_2528602” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]
Annie Leibovitz. AFP[/caption] The new calender features 13 famous women from varied professions, body types and ages. Artist Yoko Ono, singer Patti Smith, tennis player Serena Williams, writer Fran Lebowitz, actress Amy Schumer, blogger Tavi Gevinson, film director Ava DuVernay, model Natalia Vodianova, art collector Agnes Gund, producer Kathleen Kennedy, business woman Mellody Hobson, artist Shirin Neshat, and actress Yao Chen were the chosen ones.
The shots are candid and are shot in their real raw style. What stands out is the use of lighting, kept to the bare minimum, depicting them as power figures in themselves, without a male gaze. The Pirelli Calendar is a trade calendar published by the Pirelli company’s UK subsidiary. It is an annual publication dating back to 1964. The calendar is known for its limited availability, as it is only presented as a gift by the company. Despite the remarkable success of the calendar and the rave reviews it has received, it continues to attract criticism for being prosaic, until this year, when the calendar overturns completely to inhabit groundbreaking representations . The photos from this years edition went viral when Amy Schumer posted her picture from the series on Twitter and The Independent quoted her as saying, “Schumer herself had this to say on the image “I felt I was more beautiful than I’ve ever felt in my life.”
The women spoke warmly of the calendar’s symbolism, with Leibovitz describing it as representative of a shift in the way women are viewed, reports The Guardian .