The set of the Pirelli 2026 calendar: Digital surrealism, analogue esthetics and a fish tank | Culture

On the set of every great photo shoot, there is an almost solemn tension: every gesture that is made will impact the final result; what any employee in any department does affects the work of another. With a religious respect, no one does anything they shouldn’t. The leaders of each team can be quickly identified: they are the ones crowded on the three or four screens that show the shoot’s progress. The helpers are the ones who carry tools. The makeup artist totes a bag full of brushes, creams, foundations and concealers; the production manager, a constantly vibrating cell phone and a scrunched pack of cigarettes.

This particular set, the luxurious Arri Stage on the outskirts of London on a June afternoon, has all the elements of a giant production: solemnity and tension, helpers and creatives — and a fish tank. The tank is about two meters long, and the legendary Czech model Eva Herzigova is immersed in it. Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø takes her portrait, Fuji camera in hand, zooming in and out from the tank, interrupting each series of shots to look from time to time at the screens. The model surfaces frequently to gulp air before fully immersing herself again to let her blonde hair take on surreal shapes around her head. “I always play a role in the sessions, I’m never myself,” Herzigova explains after three hours in the water. “Today, for example, I don’t play a mermaid: I’m more of a creature like a jellyfish. I didn’t ask for this aquatic job, I was assigned it. I’m a Pisces. Coincidence?”

There’s a more earthly explanation for what brought Herzigova here: the 2026 Pirelli calendar, one of the biggest annual milestones in the world of photography. What began in 1964 as a vehicle to promote the Milan company’s tires featuring spectacular photos of international models, has become an institution that has employed some of the greatest image-makers of our time, including Richard Avedon, Terry Richardson, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh, Bruce Weber, Annie Leibovitz, Steve McCurry, Steven Meisel, as well as some of the biggest stars.

“Being chosen as a photographer for the Pirelli calendar is like winning an award, you just have to then deserve it,” explains Sundsbø, who has photographed campaigns for major fashion houses such as Bulgari, Cartier, Hermès, Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford, Thierry Mugler, Estée Lauder, Giorgio Armani, Guerlain and Lancôme. In 2014, he won an Emmy for a video for The New York Times.

Herzigova, 52, is one of the models chosen for the next The Cal. She joins a mature cast: actresses Tilda Swinton,64; Isabella Rossellini, 73; Italy’s Luisa Ranieri, 51; and designer Susie Cave, 58, who is married to musician Nick Cave. Then there’s a slightly younger crew: the tennis player Venus Williams, the pop star FKA Twigs, the actress Gwendoline Christie (Briana of Tarth in Game of Thrones) and Irina Shayk, the most popular model of the early 2010s. They are also joined by Puerto Rican actress Adria Arjona and Chinese model and actress Du Juan.

“These are not young models who you pay to come but who don’t know what they are doing here,” explains Sundsbø.“I did the casting with Pirelli thinking of experienced women: Susie has been on the calendar three times and Eva as many times in the last 25 years. I didn’t want to be the man who takes advantage of the innocence of women younger than him: I wanted women my age who wanted to be here, who were told at all times what was going to be done,” he explains.

Isabella Rossellini poses for the next edition of the Pirelli calendar.Alessandro Scotti (2026 Pirelli Calendar)

What was going to be done was an exploration into Sundsbø’s esthetic obsessions, especially the mix between nature and technology. Months before the studio photo shoots, to which Pirelli invited EL PAÍS, the photographer took the team through the Norwegian and English countryside. The landscapes they captured there are those that are projected onto the huge screens of the Arri studio, thanks to the latest Hollywood technology. This allows Sundsbø, who specializes in outdoor photography, to locate his models in nature while controlling how Herzigova’s hair floats or the drooping of her eyelid, with an attention to detail that only a studio allows. A millimeter in any direction means a different universe.

The mixture of naturalism and artificiality produces something almost surreal. Sundsbø calls it magical realism. “But not because it resembles Latin American literature, but because it is real but unreal. The sets are digital, the cameras are digital, but the photos look analogue,” he says.

Some of the models have an associated element: Herzigova water; and actress Ranieri, the wind. In previous sessions, Ranieri posed like a statue in front of a large fan. Before Sundsbø took the photos, a silk cloth was draped over the actress to ripple dramatically. “It’s very difficult to portray the wind, but if you have an object that represents it, it’s feasible,” Sundsbø explains.

“It’s very different being a model to acting!” observes Ranieri as she leaves the session. “With a script, you have words that allow you to enter a world of emotions. In a photo shoot, you’re capturing a moment, there’s no context, there’s no character that you can build with words.”

Irina Shayk, during her photo shoot in London for the 2026 Pirelli calendar. Alessandro Scotti (2026 Pirelli Calendar)

Capturing the moment, that tense relationship between photography and time, is another of Sundsbø’s talents: “Photography is not cinema, where there is narrative and a story. Photography is not even a poem. It’s a phrase in a poem, where you have to guess what came before and what will come after. And when it’s good, when it’s really good, you want to know what surrounds that moment. You see a photo by Cartier-Bresson and that happens, it makes you dream. Who is the boy carrying the bottle? [In reference to the famous photo Rue Mouffetard, Paris] What is happening in this image? It makes you think. And thinking about it makes it better than if you were told the whole story.”

It is possibly the least Instagrammable approach in the world, but perhaps that is precisely the objective. “It’s just that the world of fashion, of fashion photography, is so boring right now,” says Herzigova. “In general, with the new platforms, the new networks, anyone can use a filter and be a model, anyone can be a photographer. It’s nice to work with someone who presents you with a worthy idea because they have a worthy vision,” she says of Sundsbø.

All this — supermodels and fish tanks, the wind and the Norwegian countryside, digital surrealism with analogue esthetics — to sell tires? “No,” says Sundsbø. “It’s like that famous phrase by Irving Penn: ‘Fashion photography doesn’t sell fashion, it sells dreams.’ It’s the same here. Pirelli already has Formula 1 to sell its tires. I don’t intend to sell car wheels, but to communicate something beautiful and magical, something that, hopefully, they will want to have associated with their name. That’s my job.”

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