Albert Watson Dreams. Pirelli Calendar 2019

Appearing in 1964 as a successful marketing move and becoming a real sensation in the 60s, the Pirelli calendar very quickly acquired the status of an exclusive product with a deep artistic and cultural meaning. Today, the offer to work with Pirelli is synonymous with official recognition on the world stage for photographers, and participation in the filming of the project makes honor for any of the superstars.

Filming for the 46th issue of the calendar took place in April 2018 in Miami and New York. The ideas of Albert Watson were attended by supermodel Gigi Hadid and famous American designer Alexander Wang, stars of the American Ballet Theater Misty Copland and Calvin Royal III, outstanding model and actress Letizia Casta and famous dancer Sergey Polunin, as well as young promising actress Julia Garner and the Swedish model Astrid Eyck.

“When I started the project,” explains Watson, “I wanted to implement it in a manner different from other photographers, and I asked myself which way would be the most optimal. As a result, I tried to capture images that carry depth and tell a certain story, and all this at a high quality level. I wanted to get not just pictures of people, but something more: I tried to achieve similarities with the “still pictures” from the films. I would like the people viewing the Calendar to understand that I was driven by pure photographicity and sought to explore the inner world of the heroines I photographed, creating situations in which the positive thinking of modern women is manifested, ”says Albert Watson.

According to the author, the exhibition "Dreams" is a cinematic rather than a photographic project. The exhibition presents 40 color and black-and-white photographs - four series of photographs, which are “mini-films”: each of them tells the story of a woman who has her own idea of happiness and goes to her cherished dream in her own way.

The heroine Gigi Hadid, recently parted with her lover, enclosed herself in a glass tower of loneliness. Julia Garner played the role of a girl photographer who takes pictures of nature and dreams of exhibitions and recognition. Misty Copeland, whose partner was Calvin Royal III, tried on a life full of dreams about the great fame of a ballerina, and Letitia Casta turned into the lens of Albert Watson into an artist living in a loft with her boyfriend (Sergey Polunin).

“To make a dream come true, you must work hard. I always went forward step by step, from one goal to another, not trying to immediately fly up to the top of the stairs. Although it sometimes occurs to me that the staircase can extend indefinitely, and the highest step - move further and further away, I believe that it still makes sense to create more and more ambitious goals and aspirations once in a while, ”admits Albert Watson