Unlike many of his predecessors on the Pirelli Calendar, photographer Steve McCurry was not known for working in fashion or advertising. Or indeed for shooting scantily-clad models. Variously called a photojournalist or war photographer, McCurry prefers to describe himself as a street photographer who captures “found situations”. As he put it: “The most interesting way to work is to walk down the street, capturing life as it unfolds, by chance.” For the 2013 Calendar, McCurry adapted this approach, introducing elements of real life and spontaneity into what is otherwise the highly orchestrated task of shooting a Cal.
Although McCurry peopled the Calendar with models – incorporating fashion, elegance and sensuality in keeping with the Cal tradition – he wanted to celebrate these women for more than just their talent and beauty. He chose women who were also known for “their charitable work and contributions to their communities”. “These models are clothed. They are purposeful and idealistic people,” he added. Isabeli Fontana, for instance, was the Brazilian ambassador for 1love, an organisation helping disadvantaged children. Petra Nemcova had established the Happy Hearts Fund after surviving the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, to support children affected by natural disasters. Also featured were models Karlie Kloss, Adriana Lima, Liya Kebede, Hanaa Ben Abdesslem, Summer Rayne Oakes, Elisa Sednaoui and Kyleigh Kuhn, each making a difference in their own way.
The perfect backdrop
McCurry also included portraits of Brazilian performers including actress Sônia Braga and singer Marisa Monte. But the biggest star of the Calendar was undoubtedly the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, whose graffiti, bars, bodegas, streets and skyline provide the backdrop for every shot. McCurry had been to Rio twice before during the Carnival and been struck by its “mythic” landscape of mountains and ocean, its bustling nightlife and “incredible light”. All of these are celebrated in the Calendar, which explodes with the colour and vitality of the city.
“I walked a lot through the streets, looking at all these moments of daily life and taking lots and lots of pictures,” said McCurry of the two-week shoot. One image of a girl selling peppers (featured in November) was a “happy accident” of these explorations. Working with the models, he was focused on “photographing them doing their thing,” he said, “but trying to dial it back – the moves, the drama, the posing – to make it more real.”
One particular shot of Elisa Sednaoui in a doorway, next to a building where a woman sits at a window above graffiti of the Brazilian flag, was the result of four hours of shooting in the rain. Adults and children walked by in their raincoats and McCurry shot from across the street, under a tarp. The final image is both real and somehow unreal in its dramatic play of shadow, colour and contrast.
Brazil has always been a significant place for Pirelli as a major car market and manufacturing base. The country was previously used as a backdrop in Patrick Demarchelier's 2005 Calendar and Terry Richardson's in 2010, though those images were largely restricted to its beaches. McCurry's focus on Brazil's second-biggest city felt timely, following its successful bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games and the country's rapid economic and social transformation. As one of his frequent collaborators, writer Paul Theroux, put it: “It is impossible to see the Steve McCurry photographs of Rio and its people and not wish to be there.”
A life's work
McCurry had dreamt of being a photographer as a child flicking through Life magazine. One photo story from 1961 by New Zealand photographer Brian Brake made a particularly strong impression. It captured the drama of the Indian monsoons. McCurry was inspired to see those scenes for himself. After studying filmmaking at university and working as a newspaper photographer in Pennsylvania, he moved to India aged 27 to hone his craft as a photographer. “I bought a one-way ticket and I was just going to stay there as long as it took,” he recalled in an interview with PBS.
He ended up in Pakistan, where he became intrigued by the stories of Afghan refugees. He decided to cross the border into Afghanistan to shoot the civil war. Dressed in traditional dress and with a full beard, he travelled around for months with the mujahedin, then when the Soviet Union invaded at the end of 1979, his were the first photos to reach Europe and America of the defiant Afghans.
In 1984, he arrived at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan and chanced upon a 12-year-old girl called Sharbat Gula, who had been forced to flee her village in eastern Afghanistan after it was bombed by the Soviets. The girl had piercing green eyes and was dressed in a red headscarf.McCurry's portrait of her, which appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic, became one of the world's best-known photojournalistic images. A symbol of Afghanistan's plight and of displaced people around the world, the image – now iconic – made McCurry's reputation.
McCurry went on to shoot in Myanmar (then Burma), China, Thailand and the Middle East among other places. He became a frequent contributor to National Geographic and his work has been published and exhibited around the world. Exuberant colour and masterful composition are defining features of his photos. But so is the humanity at the heart of every picture – a quality he also managed to inject into his gallery of images for Pirelli. “For me,” he once said of his photographs to the online interview magazine The Talks, “they're just a whimsical, poetic look at this commonality of humanity. I think the best photos stay with you, they're something that you can't forget.”
