Annie Leibovitz

THE CAL: Pirelli Calendar 2016

Pirelli Calendar 2016 exhibition is a part of international Photo Biennale 2016. Photo Biennale will last for 2 months and it will present more than 60 exhibitions of Russian and foreign photographers including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Osamu Shiihara, Hein Gorny, Sebastiao Salgado, exhibition from the collection of European House of photography, Paris, SRgey chilikov, Eugeny Granilcshikov, Steve Fitch, Candida Hoefer, Shunsuke Francois Nanjo, Graziano Arici, Olivier Culman, Ken Matsubara, Karen Knorr, Thierry Bouёt, Manuel Alarez Bravo and others.

The 43rd edition of Pirelli Calendar was created by one of the most celebrated American photographers and portraitists, Annie Leibovitz, who shot the work last July in her New York studio. Leibovitz is also the creator of the 2000 Pirelli Calendar, which featured choreographer Mark Morris’s dancers. The 2000 pictures were the first set of nudes of her career.

The 2016 Pirelli Calendar features 13 women of outstanding professional, social, cultural, sporting and artistic accomplishment: actress Yao Chen, the first Chinese UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador; Russian top model Natalia Vodianova, founder of the charity Naked Heart Russia; producer Kathleen Kennedy, the Chairperson of Lucasfilm and one of the most influential figures in Hollywood; art collector and patroness Agnes Gund (with her granddaughter Sadie Rain Hope-Gund), President Emerita of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; tennis player Serena Williams, number one in the world; opinion leader, critic and writer Fran Lebowitz; the President of Ariel Investments, Mellody Hobson, who supports charity projects in Chicago; film director Ava DuVernay, whose films include Selma, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture in 2015; blogger Tavi Gevinson, founder of Style Rookie and online magazine Rookie; Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat; artist, musician and performer Yoko Ono; singer Patti Smith, one of the top rock stars of all time; and the actress and stand-up comedian Amy Schumer.

The women are of different ages and backgrounds and have different kinds of careers. As was the case with the first few Calendars of the Sixties and, more recently, in Peter Lindbergh’s 2002 Calendar, or Patrick Demarchelier’s 2008 and Steve McCurry’s 2013 Calendars, there are no nudes.