Photo Caption: (L-R) Georgina Storilijtoric, Lily Cole, Terry Richardson, Meloes Horst and Daisy Lowe attend the 2010 Pirelli Calendar Launch press conference at the Intercontinental Hotel, Park Lane on November 19, 2009 in London, England. - Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images Europe)

London, England, UK – The 2010 Pirelli Calendar – the 37th edition of the annual cult classic – was presented to the press, guests and collectors from around the world at its global premiere in London today. The much-awaited engagement with ‘The Cal’ was held this year at Old Billingsgate, the late 19th century building on the banks of the Thames, where from 1875 to 1982 it housed the capital city’s fish market.
Following China, immortalized by Patrick Demarchelier in the 2008 edition, and Botswana shot by Peter Beard a year later, 2010 is the year of Brazil, and the work of American photographer Terry Richardson, the celebrated “enfant terrible” known for his provocative and outrageous approach to his art.
In the 30 images that span the months of 2010, Terry Richardson depicts a return to a playful, pure Eros. Through his lens, he fantasizes and provokes, but with a simplicity that sculpts and captures the sunniest side of femininity. He portrays a woman who is captivating because she is natural; a woman who plays with stereotypes in order to undo them, and who makes irony the only veil that covers her. This is a return to the natural, authentic atmospheres and images of the 1960s and 1970s. It is a clear homage to the Calendar’s origins, a throwback to the first editions by Robert Freeman (1964), Brian Duffy (1965) and Harry Peccinotti (1968 and 1969). Terry Richardson – like his illustrious predecessors – has chosen a simple kind of photography, without retouching, where natural-ness prevails over technique and becomes the key to removing artificial excesses en vogue today to reveal the true woman underneath the superfluity.
The rooster, the saber, the jets of water and the old tires in the Calendar’s shots become the punctuation marks giving rhythm and harmony to the tale told by Richardson. He takes the Pop Art that inspired some early editions of the Calendar and merges it with an Eros typical of the American photographer. That Eros is alluded to in the 2010 Cal and evoked only slightly. Richardson uses this to mock convention, giving form and carnality to taboo things.
This is a Calendar which Francesco Negri Arnoldi, former Art History Professor at the University of Salento in Lecce and University Tor Vergata in Rome, considers Pop. He defines it as “totally new in its return to the past; absolutely original in its consolidated tradition, and capable of rediscovering the charm of all-natural femininity”. With the return to Pop Art, the language adopted is an essential and immediate iconographic language, understandable by all and contaminated only by daily life.
The 2010 edition is a clear expression and Terry Richardson is its interpreter: he portrays figures without frills, removed from complicated and artificial contexts set by fashion trends. The setting has no showy backgrounds or schemes, in line with the photographer’s simplicity and focus on the essential. “A great photographer,” says Richardson, “captures the moment – that’s why I shoot without extra equipment and without assistants.
“My technique is the absence of technique: the lens is my eye, my charisma, my ability to capture moments of truth, whatever they may be, picture angles, use of color, light, scenery – these have always been the essential aspects of my photographic art.”
Eleven models appear in the Calendar:  Catherine McNeil, Abbey Lee Kershaw and Miranda Kerr of Australia, Eniko Mihalik from Hungary, Marloes Horst of the Netherlands, Lily Cole, Daisy Lowe, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley from the UK, Georgina Stojilijkovic of Serbia and two Brazilian natives, Gracie Carvalho and Ana Beatriz Barros.
Pirelli Tire North America designs, develops, manufactures and markets tires for passenger vehicles in both the original equipment and replacement markets as well as markets and distributes tires for motorcycle and motorsports. Located in Rome, Georgia, Pirelli’s Modular Integrated Robotized System (MIRS) employs state-of-the-art technology to manufacture tires for both export and domestic markets. For more information please visit www.us.pirelli.com.

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Media Contacts:
Rafael Navarro, Director Communications & Motorsports
951-533-0305 rafael.navarro@pirelli.com

Joe Severns, Public Relations Manager
706-506-2195 joe.severns@pirelli.com

The 2009 edition of the Pirelli Calendar, cult object for more than forty years among connoisseurs of photography, beauty and cultural evolution was unveiled today at its world premiere held at The Station in Berlin, the historic train depot that connected the capital with Dresden, Vienna and Prague in the late 19th century.

The setting for the 36th “Cal” is the landscape of Botswana, where last May famed photographer Peter Beard spent ten days immortalizing seven internationally renowned models. Beard, who lived in Kenya for thirty years, is one of the world’s greatest interpreters of the mystery and charm of Africa.

After last year’s China edition, where Patrick Demarchelier artfully juxtaposed the atmospheres of ancient tea houses with the modernity of China’s metropolises, the Pirelli Calendar moves to one of the few places in Africa that remain wild and unspoiled, free of the ravages of war and with the highest concentration of wildlife.

Peter Beard has chosen an authentic and ancestral land that is born of the interpenetration of two different worlds: the aquatic oasis of the Okavango River delta and the arid expanse of the Kalahari Desert. A place that has been spared both the exploitation of the land and the impoverishment of its resources, the ideal setting for the photographer’s representation of nature as a metaphysical entity, always in motion, source of infinite creativity, within whose rhythms and laws everything must begin and end.

A nature described as powerful yet at the same time wounded, with an harmonic view of the environment that draws on the spirit of 19th-century American naturalism. Through Beard’s lens, nature unleashes an angry cry and rebels against humanity’s incapacity to combine growth and development with wisdom and respect for diversity. It is in this context that elephants, the real protagonists of this edition of the Cal, struggle to survive, relegated as they are to ever shrinking areas. Elephants as metaphor of the human race, and Africa as metaphor of a devastated world that must recover its lost harmony.

Beard grants no privilege to humans, for he believes that we, just like animals, must respect nature’s balance. He imagines for all of us the bitter fate of living in an environment rendered ever more inhospitable by myopic, uncontrolled development, where the quality of life progressively declines and must come to terms with the rebellion of an offended nature.

The only hope is beauty. Beard believes that the key to saving humankind lies in a constant quest for truth and beauty. Beard’s women are portrayed as generators of life, the source of all things, whose grace remains fully intact. They are depicted as creatures born of nature’s womb, heroic, full of strength, with decisive features and powerful movements; statues, symbols of nature’s creativity and ability to regenerate itself. “Only beauty can save the world” is the message of the new Pirelli Calendar, in the spirit of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

The seven models are: Daria Werbowy of Canada, Emanuela de Paula and Isabeli Fontana (who debuted in Demarchelier’s 2005 Calendar) from Brazil, Lara Stone and Rianne Ten Haken from Holland, Malgosia Bela of Poland and Italy’s own Mariacarla Boscono (who first appeared in the 2003 edition by Bruce Weber and again in Nick Knight’s 2004 Calendar).

The final result is a calendar/diary that Peter Beard describes as “a living sculpture”. The 56 plates of the new Cal are a rich collage of images, quotations, observations by the artist on the environment, climate change and global warming, overpopulation and the depletion of natural resources. “My real concern”, says the photographer “is the destruction of nature on a global scale. We’ve totally lost track of what evolution is based on, and how important diversity is in nature. This concept is the very foundation of survival”.

Throughout the shooting and production of the Calendar, a number of measures were taken to minimize its environmental impact. In keeping with Peter Beard’s message, the Pirelli Calendar and the gala presentation of the 2009 edition will be Zero Impact®. Pirelli, in cooperation with a LifeGate initiative, will contribute to the creation and protection of a forested area in Costa Rica capable of absorbing the same quantity of CO2 emissions generated by the production and printing of the Calendar and by the presentation gala. Additionally, the Calendar will be printed on natural, lead-free paper.

Pirelli Tire North America designs, develops, manufactures and markets tires for passenger vehicles in both the original equipment and replacement markets as well as markets and distributes tires for motorcycles and motorsports. Located in Rome, Georgia, Pirelli’s Modular Integrated Robotized System (MIRS) employs state-of-the-art technology to manufacture tires for both export and domestic markets.  For more information please visit www.us.pirelli.com.