Steve McCurry (bibliography) shot the 2013 Pirelli calendar with Nikon (and Hasselblad) cameras. The big surprise this year was that the models are actually wearing clothes:
This year’s Pirelli photographer, Steve McCurry, reunited with Starr and models Kuhn, Nemcova, and Summer Rayne Oakes at McCurry’s studio in Long Island City a few weeks ago to look at a version of the calendar. McCurry is known for his photographs of impoverished, war-torn countries; his most famous image, Afghan Girl, became iconic when it appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985. Although the Pirelli assignment wasn’t his first time working with fashion models (“I did a couple of shoots in Italy, years ago”), it’s a far cry from the raw photojournalism he’s built his career on.
“When I told the models there would be no nudity, some of them were disappointed,” laughs casting director Jennifer Starr, who has worked with Pirelli on the calendar for seventeen years. Petra Nemcova was one of them: “I found out only a week before that it wasn’t nude,” she said.