Shot on the French Riviera by creative duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, the 2006 Pirelli Calendar remains one of the most seductive and transgressive editions. It starred five of the world's leading models, Gisele Bundchen, Guinevere van Seenus, Kate Moss, Karen Elson and Natalia Vodianova, as well as actress/singer Jennifer Lopez, who was making her Pirelli Calendar debut. “I've heard about the Pirelli Calendar for years,” Lopez remarked. “When I heard that Mert and Marcus were doing it, I just couldn't say no. You know no matter what happens, you're going to look great, you're going to look sexy, you're going to look different than you've ever looked before.”
The Calendar consisted mainly of black and white photos, except for splashes of colour on the cover and in the shots for March and November, and evoked the style of German photographer Helmut Newton. The images were provocative and opulent with visual cues that harked back to glamorous eras of the past. There were hints of the 1940s in the way Lopez was dressed in a cotton-wrap bikini with her hair in an Ava Gardner wave. And there were echoes of Marilyn Monroe and Jean Harlow in the sex-bomb depiction of Vodianova, whose hair was dyed platinum blonde.
Understanding human desire
The common thread was summed up in the Calendar's press release by the expression “libres et puissantes” (free and powerful). But the overarching theme was surely the semiotics of sex, which Mert and Marcus were expert at evoking. As one commentator put it, their work “centres on an understanding of human desire – of how to trigger it, and simultaneously, make us conscious of our viewership.”
The duo was also skilled at bringing their location of Cap d'Antibes into the frame. There are dolphins, yachts and palm trees. But consider also the way the Mediterranean light dapples or more often slices across a naked body. And the ubiquity of water, which accentuates the sheen and shine of skin and turns hair into a tousled mop or slick mane, making the photos even more sensuous and enticing.
“The new fabulous”
Mert, born in Turkey, and Marcus, born in Wales, met in 1994 at a party in the English coastal town of Hastings. Shortly afterwards they moved into a derelict loft in East London, which they converted into a studio, and began taking pictures of their friends. In 1997 their work was published in British magazine Dazed & Confused. A year later they were asked to shoot for art-and-fashion bible Visionaire, which led to them signing with fashion agent Kim Sion. It wasn't long before they were shooting ad campaigns for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss and Missoni and editorial for Vogue, W and Pop Magazine, and being heralded as the next big thing in fashion photography and advertising.
Their work was credited with “upending the conventions of contemporary fashion photography”, according to the New York Times . In contrast to the grungy artlessness of the 1990s, their pictures exalted glamour, luxury and artifice. “They are the new fabulous,” Ivan Bart, director of IMG Models, said.
Beneath the perfect veneer and ostensible glamour, their pictures contain darker, surreal elements. But however experimental or radical the images are, the women featured are all of a type: “Sexually charged, confident, not too over the top,” said Marcus in an interview with The New Yorker . “We like powerful women, women with a meaning,” added Mert, “a you-don't-have-to-talk-or-move-too-much-to-tell-who-you-are kind of woman.” Their heroines include Marlene Dietrich, Madonna, Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlotte Rampling. “Ladies who dressed for a thrill.” It's a mood board of women that could have inspired the 2006 Pirelli Calendar, which blended tradition and innovation to produce a modern classic.
