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Pirelli Calendar Album: The First 25 Years
BOOK
- GenresPhotography
211 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1990
9 people want to read
About the author
Michael Pye
69 books66 followersMichael Pye (b. 1946) is a writer who reported on business for The Sunday Times of London in the 1960s and 1970s. He has also authored many books, two of which are about the entertainment industry: The Movie Brats: How the Film Generation Took Over Hollywood (with Lynda Myles, 1979), and Moguls: Inside the Business of Show Business (1980).
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 18, 2025
The photographs are certainly aesthetically pleasing in this 1988 volume that tells the story of the first 25 years of the famous Pirelli Tires calendar. (Sorry...it's tyres here since it's a British book.)
I didn't even know that the calendar was a product of the British division of the Italian company until I read this. This is really a book about marketing and design (with photography) and as such it's more interesting than just a book of selections from calendar photos.
Of course, one thing that gave me a chuckle was that my copy of this book was printed and then assembled with pages 176-200 upside down and backwards--which would be a bold design choice if I thought that happened on purpose.
One thing that I find interesting (especially with older writing) is when you can see signs of the biases of writers by who they presume isn't going to be reading their words--in this case the text reveals a lot of its 1988-ness in how the writer clearly assumes a white male audience in how they talk about people who aren't one or the other of those things--and yes, that does spoil the pretty pictures.
There are some interesting images here and of special note are the photos by Sarah Moon and Norman Parkinson and the year they hired a choreographer to stage dance photos, as well as the almost performance art quality of the Allen Jones year.
The story of the creation, death, and rebirth of the calendar is interesting as an insight into 20th century business.
The misogyny, racism (plus some colonialism) in the text pops up periodically.
As always with this sort of thing I really would be interested in a behind the behind the scenes document.
I didn't even know that the calendar was a product of the British division of the Italian company until I read this. This is really a book about marketing and design (with photography) and as such it's more interesting than just a book of selections from calendar photos.
Of course, one thing that gave me a chuckle was that my copy of this book was printed and then assembled with pages 176-200 upside down and backwards--which would be a bold design choice if I thought that happened on purpose.
One thing that I find interesting (especially with older writing) is when you can see signs of the biases of writers by who they presume isn't going to be reading their words--in this case the text reveals a lot of its 1988-ness in how the writer clearly assumes a white male audience in how they talk about people who aren't one or the other of those things--and yes, that does spoil the pretty pictures.
There are some interesting images here and of special note are the photos by Sarah Moon and Norman Parkinson and the year they hired a choreographer to stage dance photos, as well as the almost performance art quality of the Allen Jones year.
The story of the creation, death, and rebirth of the calendar is interesting as an insight into 20th century business.
The misogyny, racism (plus some colonialism) in the text pops up periodically.
As always with this sort of thing I really would be interested in a behind the behind the scenes document.
Displaying 1 of 1 review