Sundsbø photographs the need to reconnect individual and nature

Irina Shayk. Sølve Sundsbø

What do you think of this edition of the Pirelli Calendar?

It is in keeping with the times, or rather, this new Calendar photographs - pardon the pun - the phase we are going through in two of its most distinctive and urgent features: the need to reinvent the concept of nature and the need to rethink our relationship with the environment. The famous pairing of innovation and tradition is all well and good, but we must avoid making it a simple slogan that resonates in vain, that is, get to the bottom of certain issues. For example, realising that nature and our idea of nature are not at all the same thing and that neither is an immutable entity. Even if we struggle to understand it, the nature that Lucretius had in mind was not the same nature that Caravaggio and later the impressionist painters thought of, and even more different is the idea we have of it today. We have to understand that ideas are not something abstract, but the engine of our actions. We make certain choices because we have certain ideas. If the ideas are not clear, neither will our actions and therefore also our relationship with the world around us be clear, with all that can follow.

What, in your opinion, is the common thread in the photographer's work?

I would say symbiosis. In his work, bodies are always captured and represented in a phase of great intimacy with their surroundings, as if there were no distinction between the two, as if they were two parts of a single being. Even in his fashion photographs, the prevailing impression is that: clothes that are no longer just fabric and other inert materials but organisms that participate in the life of the wearer's body. I believe Sundsbø sees no established boundaries between things, between living and non-living, between organic and inorganic, between solid and gaseous and so on. In his images, everything exists in a continuous state of mutual interaction, even on a technical level, where traditional photography often coexists with the use of technology, mixing digital and analogue.

Can the intertwining of these two tools, technology and photography, be interpreted as a mirror of society at this precise moment in history?

Undoubtedly. Symbiosis is the future, dare I say it. Without adequate strategies of coexistence with the environment, a species is doomed to succumb, to extinction. Our technology is increasingly testing nature's ability to regenerate itself. Achieving harmony and possibly even fusion between us and the rest is the most important test we face in this age. Sundsbø's women embody an evolutionary leap, they are creatures who do not simply coexist with the elements. They want to live in symbiosis with them, to become elements themselves. All this is less fanciful than it might seem. It is not just a romantic vision of nature à la Caspar David Friedrich. It is science. Think of the recent book in which Carlo Rovelli, a physicist, reasons about the equality of all things, showing us that 'electrons and minds, stones and laws, judgements and galaxies are not essentially different in nature from one another'.

Luisa Ranieri. Sølve Sundsbø

Is there a past edition of the Pirelli Calendar that particularly impressed you?

I am very fond of Peter Lindbergh, of his limpid black and white, so I would say one of his three calendars, perhaps the first one, the 1996 one. But in the end I would choose the first one, the calendar of Robert Freeman, the photographer of the Beatles and Swinging London to whom I instinctively link the Calendar myth. I would also choose one image in particular from that edition, the one in which half the shot is occupied by the blue expanse of the sea and in the foreground there is a beach with long late afternoon shadows stretching across the sand. The woman, in a very normal two-piece swimming costume, is in the centre of the frame but small, almost in the distance. She looks more like a memory than a person in the flesh, as every photograph is after all, in its simple, lacerating immediacy.

What is the significance of the Calendar in this era?

Its physicality. And I am not referring to the women's bodies it represents, but to the paper it is made of. In the years when it was born, that the Calendar was an object was a given. Over time, this physicality has increasingly become an added value. At a time when even art tends to dematerialise, become virtual, intangible and odourless, the Calendar has remained paper, an object whose shape and size have their own meaning. It is not for nothing that photographers not only create the images but also participate in the creation of the physical object, which is always different every year. I think its secret lies precisely in this physical quality. Perhaps in the past it was only dictated by the desire to make a refined object, one that would stand out from the many calendars hanging on blackened workshop walls. Today it stands out because it continues to believe that the tactile element of an image should be preserved. It sounds like a no-brainer, yet it is a central defining issue of our time. Think about how many people keep private photos, the memories of their lives, in the digital memory of a phone, unlike in the old days when those same images were collected in family albums. Think how precious and indispensable those albums were. They were in every home and were looked after with respect and devotion, something akin to the ancestral altars in Japanese homes. The physical experience of an image is a fundamental part of an individual's spiritual formation. That images have become so immaterial is not good for anyone; on the contrary, I would say that it entails profound risks such as an increasingly difficult acceptance of one's own body or underestimating the consequences that a physical gesture can have on others or even on ourselves.

How, in your opinion, has the perception of photography changed?

To put it in one word, photography has become instagrammatised. With that hideous contemporary neologism that is the adjective instagrammable, we have supplanted what we used to call photogenic. It may seem like a simple shift in scale, a trivial media evolution, but it is something more, a real evolutionary leap on a social and cultural, not to mention economic, level. There was a time when photography as an activity was the preserve of the few, of those who knew the secrets of the medium. Today, not only is the technique available to everyone, but it is used by everyone with purposes that often go far beyond the mere capture of an image. In the age of social media, photography has become the brick with which everyone builds their identity, and since everyone likes to represent themselves better than they see themselves, it has also become a brick of artifice. The world according to Instagram often has the consistency of a house of cards, which is both fascinating and disturbing. Not to mention how artificial intelligence is changing photography in every aspect. Whatever judgement we want to make on these innovations, one point we can take for granted: photography is now an arena where a person's destiny is manifested and decided. When asked about this, model and fashion designer Alexa Chung said: "I am interested in photography, as is every human being. I would go even further: that no human being today can afford the luxury of ignoring photography.

It has been more than sixty years since the first edition of the Pirelli Calendar. How has it managed to survive in a world full of images?

I would say precisely because it evokes an idea of the world, even before a story. The idea that a series of photos accompanies the passing of time. The idea that for the thirty days or so that a month is made up of, there is a rectangle of printed paper hosting a single image. The Pirelli Calendar survives because it wants to survive. It is first and foremost an act of will. If the terms of comparison were only the changes in the world, all that would remain would be to consign it to the past, to memories, as indeed has happened to calendars in general, which are no longer as ubiquitous as they once were. In a world invaded by images, the Calendar survives because it believes in the idea that not all images are equal and that there are some more worthy of persisting in our retinas. The fascination that the Pirelli Calendar exerts, at least on me, lies precisely in its great faith in photography, in the search for the perfect shot that opens up a rift. A moment of dilated silence in the deafening flood of images.

What role is entrusted by the Calendar to women, the undisputed protagonists of its story?

Since it was invented, photography has struggled to establish itself as an art. Even today, when we think of great photographers, we often tend to favour photojournalists or at least those photographers in whom the medium seems to be at the disposal of something, such as fashion photographers. That photography today is a mode of expression that enjoys an artistic dignity comparable to painting or sculpture we take for granted, when in fact it has been a conquest. In this, photography is reminiscent of the battles women had to wage to achieve what today appears normal. Curiously, women's emancipation and the artistic emancipation of photography went hand in hand, both starting in the 19th century and both exploding in the 1970s. It should also be mentioned that women have made a fundamental contribution to the transformation of photography into a noble art. Just think of Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, Nan Goldin and before them Tina Modotti or Diane Arbus. In the Calendar, only apparently is the woman called upon to play the role of mere model, inspirational muse. In fact, what distinguishes the Calendar is precisely the idea of calling on women to play a role and think of themselves on a stage. They are not mere poses but performances, acting. Their relationship with the photographer is more reminiscent of that between director and actress than that between painter and model.

Did the image become narration or has it always been?

It is a complex issue. To a certain extent, of course, it always has been. In my opinion, however, the real crux of the matter and one of the underestimated dangers of our time is how narrative pervades everything, not just images. By now, the principle has been established that everything should be narrated. But this is not the case. One can also explain, show, illustrate or even simply tell. Instead, everyone narrates, from politicians to journalists. It is underestimated that storytelling thus understood becomes primarily an instrument of persuasion. What are now called narratives are often nothing more than propaganda. I firmly believe that we have come to place an excessive and misleading importance on stories. It is not stories that change the world but ideas. At most, a story can help us better understand the meaning of an idea. My ideal images - and here I allow myself another pun - are those that express an idea, not those that tell.