Pirelli Calendar 2027: India portrayed through models and ordinary people

The Indian master photographer Raghu Rai passed away on 26 April, but over the past three months he had been working on the Calendar project, creating an original series of photographs that reflected his roots and his vision of the country. ‘When we started, my father and mother had discussed many ideas and had given the project a name: Past Forward. The “past” was the framework he had built with his unpublished work taken over the last 60 years. The ‘present’ was the front, that is, the casting, street casting and ordinary people he met on the streets across the country. That was what we wanted to do: the front and the back,’ says Avani Rai.

‘At first we thought we’d shoot it in the studio because he wasn’t able to move, but then, as things developed, it was as if my father had said to me: “It’s better if you do it.”’ According to Avani, up until that point, her father’s work ‘was a tribute to India: it combined the vision he had developed over the course of his life with a more contemporary portrayal of its people and their extraordinary diversity – aspects that had always deeply fascinated him’. It thus fell to her to give shape to the Indian master’s ideas: “Bringing it to completion is something deeply personal, as if I were stepping into his perspective and the way he saw India through his camera. Photography was the gift my father left me: not just as a profession, but as a way of observing the world. It was through this that we forged a silent and profound bond. Carrying on with this work is a way for me to still feel close to him and to keep a part of him alive within me,” said Avani Rai.

For the young photographer, however, this does not mean simply following the guidelines already set out by the Indian master to the letter and then fading from view. ‘I won’t try to recreate what he would do, because that would take something away from both him and me. But I will create whilst keeping him in all my shots,’ she explains, recounting an anecdote from her childhood: ‘I’ve always protected my vision by doing things my own way. And that means that, ever since I was a child, I’d take the photograph he wanted me to take and then take the one I wanted to take. That’s how I managed the weight of his expectations. And sometimes we’d meet halfway.’ With that in mind, Avani chooses the streets as the backdrop for her work, because that is where Raghu Rai cut his teeth. “I’ll start at the flower market; we’ll go to one of Old Delhi’s oldest cinemas and observe India from the streets, through the alleyways, in the heart of Delhi.”

This approach marks a new chapter in the history of the Pirelli Calendar and will be complemented by the vision of the Norwegian photographer, who has been invited to contribute for the second time: ‘It is a great honour to have been invited once again to contribute to the Pirelli Calendar. I am delighted to be doing so alongside Avani Rai and to pay tribute to the legacy left by her father. It is an extraordinary opportunity to explore India. We will both do our utmost to celebrate this country and the memory of Mr Rai through this collaboration,” said Sølve Sundsbø.