The 2009 Pirelli Calendar

The 2009 edition of the Pirelli Calendar, cult object for more than forty years among connoisseurs of photography, beauty and cultural evolution, was unveiled in a world premiere in Berlin.

The setting for the 36th "Cal" is the landscape of Botswana, where 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.

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.

Theme

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. 

 

Photographer

Born in 1938 in New York City, raised in New York City, Alabama, and Bayberry Point, Islip, Long Island, Peter Beard kept diaries at an early age. He took his first pictures at twelve and photography quickly evolved into an extension of his diaries, as a way to preserve and remember vacations and favorite things. In 1957 he entered Yale University as a pre-medical student, but perceiving humans as the main disease soon switched to art history, studying under Vincent Scully, Joseph Albers, and Richard Lindner.

Trips to Africa in 1955 and 1960 piqued his interests and after graduating from Yale, he returned to Kenya via Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) in Rungstedlund, Denmark. She was the author of Out of Africa, Shadows On the Grass, Seven Gothic Tales  and On Mottoes In My Life. Beard met Blixen through his cousin Jerome Hill. In the early 60s he worked at Kenya's Tsavo National Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5000 Black Rhinos and published two The End of the Game books (1965 & 1977). During this same time period, he acquired Hog Ranch, the property adjacent to Karen Blixen's near the Ngong Hills and made it his home base in East Africa. Beard has written further works on his African experience: Eyelids of the Morning: The Mingeled Destines of Crocodiles and Men(1973), Longing for Darkness (1975), and his most recent books Zara's Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa (2004) written for his daughter and his latest book Peter Beard, published by Taschen in November 2006.
His first exhibit was at the Blum Helman Gallery In New York in 1975 and was followed in 1977 by the landmark installation of his photographs, elephant carcasses, burned diaries, taxidermy, African artifacts, books and personal memorabilia at the International Center of Photography (his first one man show) in New York City.