Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the original sketches he drew before John Tenniel's illustrations, the calendar plays on exaggerated sizing and playful flourishes with help from a blockbuster cast.Adwoa, Naomi, Lupita, Whoopi: Pirelli Teases 2018 Calendar.
Adwoa Aboah is Tweedledee; Naomi Campbell and Sean Combs are The Royal Beheaders; Slick Woods is The Madhatter; Lupita Nyong'o is The Dormouse; Whoopi Goldberg is The Royal Duchess; Djimon Hounsou is The King of Hearts; RuPaul is The Queen of Hearts; Adut Akech is The Queen of Diamonds; Alpha Dia is the Five-Of-Hearts-Playing-Card Gardener; King Owusu is the Two-Of-Hearts-Playing-Card Gardener; Lil Yachty is The Queen's Guard; Thando Hopa is The Princess of Hearts; Wilson Oryema is the Seven-Of-Hearts-Playing-Card Gardener; Zoe Bedeaux is The Caterpillar; Sasha Lane is The Mad March Hare; and Duckie Thot is Alice.
Walker’s high-voltage vision follows the unconventional path of the previous two calendars, which saw Pirelli move away from the soft-core calendar-girl aesthetic it had celebrated since 1964. 2016 saw Annie Leibovitz photograph a series of women celebrated for their accomplishments, rather than just their looks, and 2017’s Peter Lindbergh calendar made waves owing to its non-airbrushed, monochromatic portraits of make-up-free, clothed actresses.
“Alice in Wonderland is a story that I’ve drawn on for so long, it’s always been in my work and life,” Walker told Vogue at the New York launch of his Pirelli pictures. “To have a black Alice is to have a new way of seeing Alice.”
The genesis of the idea formed when visiting Roald Dahl’s widow, Felicity aka Lissy Dahl, some five years ago. “She said, ‘Do you know that the Bucket family in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was originally going to be portrayed as a black family?’ And I thought about how much this would have changed things.”
Walker’s high-voltage vision follows the unconventional path of the previous two calendars, which saw Pirelli move away from the soft-core calendar-girl aesthetic it had celebrated since 1964. 2016 saw Annie Leibovitz photograph a series of women celebrated for their accomplishments, rather than just their looks, and 2017’s Peter Lindbergh calendar made waves owing to its non-airbrushed, monochromatic portraits of make-up-free, clothed actresses.
“Alice in Wonderland is a story that I’ve drawn on for so long, it’s always been in my work and life,” Walker told Vogue at the New York launch of his Pirelli pictures. “To have a black Alice is to have a new way of seeing Alice.”
The genesis of the idea formed when visiting Roald Dahl’s widow, Felicity aka Lissy Dahl, some five years ago. “She said, ‘Do you know that the Bucket family in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was originally going to be portrayed as a black family?’ And I thought about how much this would have changed things.”
On whether the chaotic fairytale was designed to hold up a mirror to today’s society, he said: “The chaos of Alice resonated because I’m predominantly a fashion photographer, and I see the fashion industry as Wonderland. I don’t see Wonderland as society today.”
“Pirelli doesn’t discriminate, it’s tyres!” chimed Campbell, Walker’s Royal Beheader. “It’s Formula One, it can go anywhere it wants to go and it will be a positive message. Even though the [theme] of the calendar is Alice in Wonderland, the message is so big.” Walker agreed: “I think it’s exciting, it’s a celebration of black beauty but it could be any skin colour to me. It’s in tune with what feels right for now.”
“The timing couldn’t have been better,” said Campbell, the Voguecontributing editor and four-time calendar star. “This week has been an iconic and phenomenal week. The new Vogue launched at the start, and it’s ending with Pirelli. It’s an amazing time, it’s a new time, and I feel that it will remain. I’m so proud of Edward.”
Beninese-American actor Djimon Hounsou said yes to Walker because, “my son has been watching white superheroes in fantasy movies from the day he was born. He’s never seen one black man. One day, he said to me, ‘I wish I was white so I could climb walls like Spider-Man.’ What world do we live in where black folks don’t exist in some stories? Inclusion should be mandatory.”
“The timing couldn’t have been better,” said Campbell, the Voguecontributing editor and four-time calendar star. “This week has been an iconic and phenomenal week. The new Vogue launched at the start, and it’s ending with Pirelli. It’s an amazing time, it’s a new time, and I feel that it will remain. I’m so proud of Edward.”
Beninese-American actor Djimon Hounsou said yes to Walker because, “my son has been watching white superheroes in fantasy movies from the day he was born. He’s never seen one black man. One day, he said to me, ‘I wish I was white so I could climb walls like Spider-Man.’ What world do we live in where black folks don’t exist in some stories? Inclusion should be mandatory.”
What was Campbell’s reaction to being cast as the gruesome twosome with Sean Combs? “I’m quite bossy, so it was perfect,” she laughed. “Don’t do what I want? Then off with your head!” It was Combs who encouraged her to get into character. "We share the same acting coach so he knows the methods. We had a lot of fun on set; a table caught fire, we were all singing - it was craziness, but we just kept going.”
Other highlights of the shoot include Hounsou “listening to RuPaul yapping all day, and seeing him existing in that environment. As soon as she entered the set, she took over. It was RuPaul all day.”
For Gambian women's rights activist and anti-female genital mutilation campaigner Jaha Dukureh, it was just having someone “take a picture of me because they liked how my eyes looked; I wasn’t a victim”. And albino model and human-rights lawyer Thando Hopa liked “working with Tim because he didn’t ‘other’ me. I was just the Queen of Hearts on set.”
South Sudanese-Australian model Duckie Thot and Hopa cried at the end of the shoot. "We felt a sense of catharsis,” Hopa explained. “Different voices and walks of life collaborated together to try to bring a message of representation and inclusion. The level and weight of what we did… we felt it.”
For Gambian women's rights activist and anti-female genital mutilation campaigner Jaha Dukureh, it was just having someone “take a picture of me because they liked how my eyes looked; I wasn’t a victim”. And albino model and human-rights lawyer Thando Hopa liked “working with Tim because he didn’t ‘other’ me. I was just the Queen of Hearts on set.”
South Sudanese-Australian model Duckie Thot and Hopa cried at the end of the shoot. "We felt a sense of catharsis,” Hopa explained. “Different voices and walks of life collaborated together to try to bring a message of representation and inclusion. The level and weight of what we did… we felt it.”
What would Walker like viewers to take away from the imagery? “A sense of beauty and relief from the everyday. I love reality, and I’m not an 'unreal' person, but I don’t think there can ever be enough escapism and fantasy.”
No comments:
Post a Comment