Ethan James Green got the call that he had been chosen to shoot the Pirelli calendar on his 34th birthday. ‘It was an unexpected gift,’ he says, speaking at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in London’s Knightsbridge on the eve of its launch. Legendary Vogue fashion editor Tonne Goodman, who styled the project, is sat to his left. ‘It’s just such a huge thing to be asked. Becoming a Pirelli photographer, you're included in a club.’
First launched by the tyre manufacturer in 1964 as a giveaway to clients, early editions of the calendar pushed a louche kind of sexiness, often gathering sunny shots of models wearing next to nothing. Evolving to become a different beast entirely, it’s now synonymous with the apex of glamour and celebrity, representing a space for the most important fashion image-makers of each generation to make their mark. The club that Green speaks of includes Sarah Moon, who brought her ethereal eye to it’s pages in the 1970s; Richard Avedon, his iconic crisp studio-shot portraiture in the 1990s; Mert and Marcus, their pop provocation in the 2000s; and Tim Walker, his fantastical world-building in the 2010s. ‘So many of the past photographers have been huge inspirations for me,’ Green adds. ‘Many of them made me want to be a photographer.’
