We've all heard of the Pirelli calendar; the annual collection of nude photographs which people have been trying to get their hands on since its inception in 1964. It's so exclusive in fact, that logging onto the calendar's site is like trying to get into the Dunhill Gentlemen's Club: if you don't have a code or aren't a registered user; forget it!
GQ spoke to renowned photographer Mario Sorrenti about shooting the famous calendar.
When you’re shooting nudes, how many people are on the set? Do you keep it down?
I just kept it to me and my assistant, and then I made everybody else go away. Basically, I made a very specific structure for how the day and the photographs were going to go. I would spend the first two or three hours on my own with the model, photographing her, and really just getting to know her if I didn’t know her. After that I would bring in the behind-the-scenes team. I didn’t want the girls to be distracted by that. A lot of them also didn’t want to be filmed nude and I wanted them to be completely nude in the photographs. So after a while, for the behind-the-scenes video, we put on some clothes that could work and then we got the behind-the-scenes people to come in and do their stuff. But by that point, I had already achieved what I was trying to do, which was really super intimate. It’s actually the most intimate that I’ve been in a really long time taking pictures, which was really nice.
It has that feeling. It reminds me of pictures that you see from like the 1940s or something, where it’s just the photographer and a model and nature, like Weston, almost.
That’s what I was trying to achieve. It was like 'I want to bring you back to photography; I want to bring you back to when it was Edward Weston and Bill Brandt (noted early 20th century photographers),' and focus on photography in that way. It was great because somehow I’ve become so desensitized over time that now, when I work, I can have 20 people behind me, and I don’t even know they’re there. I think that sometimes a model is the same way. She can be looking into a group of people and doesn’t even see anybody. When I first started taking pictures, I used to kick everybody out of the set. I’d be extremely influenced by people watching and now I don’t even feel it. So to go back to that all of a sudden was so good, man. It was so beautiful. It reminded me how much more special it is when it’s just you and your subject, you and the model. It’s just complete intimacy, nothing and no one else to interrupt that communication, that sharing, because you’re really sharing this experience, this process. - GQ