Page 73 - MONTENAPOLEONE

PETER LINDBERGH
NEW REALISM

“True and dressed, nude is no longer needed”. The Ger-
man Peter Lindbergh has no doubt about it busy on the
set of his third Pirelli Calendar that promises to be the
most naked ever, digging in the depths of female perso-
nality. And he doesn’t care if front of his lens there are
women among the most beautiful on the planet, fashion
photography must take back a new realism: “The result
is the opposite of that terrible beauty code that we see
around: perfect and horrendous women, who took away
all signs from face and body”. Intense, they appear so in
the first exclusive backstage shots of the The Cal., made
between New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London and Le
Toquet, the big stars of cinema to which is dedicated the
2017 edition (which will be unveiled on next November
29 in Paris): Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Uma Thur-
man and Kate Winslet along with Julianne Moore, Ro-
oney Mara, Charlotte Rampling, Helen Mirren, Alicia
Vikander, Zhang Ziyi, Robin Wright, Jessica Chastain,
Lupita Nyong’o, Lea Seydoux and Anastasia Ignatova.
Lindbergh also dares that, in an attempt to capture the
immediacy of personality, for example he chased Robin
Wright in Times Square: “While I was running after her
between the people of New York, I thought: I’m doing
something crazy, it’s not gonna work. She was scared, I
was uncertain of the result: when I saw them, the same
evening, I knew I had made amazing photos”.
It is not surprising that it is the beautiful and super exclu-
sive calendar, made in extremely limited copies, to rely
for the third time – never a photographer had broken
the limit of two calendars – on the lens of Lindbergh,
who already in 1996 had portrayed on the set of El Mi-
rage in California in a black and white with a powerful
expressive force, a group of top models like Eva Herzi-
gova, Carré Otis and Nastassja Kinski. Instead he made
in Hollywood and the Studios, with starts such as Kiera
Chaplin, Brittany Murphy and Mena Suvari, the edition
of 2002, in a dreamy and cinematic atmosphere - entered
into the Lindbergh aesthetic vocabulary - as well showed
also by the exhibition “A Different Vision on Fashion
Photography’ produced by the Kunsthal museum of
Rotterdam and accompanied by the monumental book
published by Taschen. Until next February 2017, we
will have the chance to investigate the visual language of
the German photographer, thanks to 220 images, along
with rare and exclusive materials such as storyboards,
props, polaroid, auditions and video interviews made
since 1978. Today, when it is still the The Cal the most
powerful means of expression to: “Fight the commercial
perfection - says Lindbergh - the risk is that people start
to believe that true beauty is the one retouched. That’s
why the Pirelli 2017 will be a calendar about sensitivity,
emotion, not about perfect bodies”.

A sinistra: scatti del Pirelli Calendar 2002 by Peter Lindbergh
Pagina accanto: Pirelli Calendar 1996 by Peter Lindbergh

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