It’s a blustery day in London, but inside the cavernous set, everything is hushed except for the slow, hypnotic swirl of water — and the unexpected beats of Snoop Dogg playing softly in the background. Eva Herzigová, submerged in a vast tank, floats like a liquid sculpture, her skintight top rippling with every move. Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø watches through the glass, capturing each interplay of light, shadow, and breath. Makeup maestro Val Garland hovers nearby, ensuring every detail survives the watery distortion. The soundtrack is a quirky touch from Herzigová herself — because even underwater, she’s keeping it cool with a little hip-hop vibes.
This is the 2026 Pirelli Calendar in the making, and for the supermodel and cinema icon it’s not her first time. In fact, it’s her third. “My first calendar was in ’96, then ’98 with Peter Lindbergh,” Herzigová recalls. “Now, almost thirty years later, here I am again. It’s like coming home.”
In the storied lineage of the Pirelli Calendar, a visual institution that has evolved from sun-drenched glamour to deeply conceptual storytelling, Sundsbø is the latest to etch his vision into its history. He will helm the 2026 edition, bringing an elemental, abstract twist to the calendar’s rich legacy.
When we speak, Sundsbø is clear: this isn’t about repeating what’s been done before. “Last year, Ethan James Green created something super beautiful, very natural outside,” he says. “Obviously, it’s hard to go and do that again — the Pirelli history is full of extraordinary examples. What I’ve tried to do is present my own vision, working with elements in a more abstract way.”
Nature remains his muse, but here it’s distilled, concentrated, and transported indoors — a deliberate subversion. “Sometimes it’s interesting to take something and treat it differently, to look at it in another way,” he explains. “You don’t think, ‘Oh, I’m on a beach or in a forest.’ It’s more like, ‘Oh, this is disconcerting.’”
Starting with Eva Herzigová, the 2026 cast already hints at an otherworldly tableau: Tilda Swinton appears as a miniature planet of moss and nature, Gwendoline Christie embodies ether — “the thing that connects everything” — and Du Juan in an arena of clouds. Alongside them, Irina Shayk, FKA Twigs, Venus Williams, Susie Cave, Adria Arjona, Luisa Ranieri, and Isabella Rossellini bring their own presence and power to the shoot. Each muse interacts with her environment not as a mere backdrop but as a co-star, helping to weave Sundsbø’s poetic and elemental vision to life.
Sundsbø sees this as an exploration of “poetry and intimacy,” brought to life not just in stills but also in a moving-image companion piece. “A photograph is like the opening line of a book,” he says. “It makes you wonder what happened before and after. That’s the power. It forces your imagination to work.”
The Pirelli Calendar has always been fertile ground for reinvention — from Karl Lagerfeld’s mythology to Tim Walker’s dreamscapes. Sundsbø is acutely aware of this heritage. “If you look at all the calendars, they’re so iconic in our visual imagination. For me to simply do that again would be a failure. The challenge is: how do you lean on the heritage without repeating it?”
His answer lies in distillation, that is, boiling down nature to pure elements: water, fire, earth, ether, space, time. “It’s the purity of it,” he says. “Even if the pictures aren’t pure at all, there’s an intensity to nature — and I want to capture that intensity in its simplest form.”
For Herzigová, that meant hours in a water tank, becoming “something between a human and a creature,” as she describes it. “Not a mermaid exactly, more like a human medusa. The lighting, the movement — it was like living inside a piece of art.”
And no, she didn’t “train” for it. “I’ve always been a good swimmer, but I didn’t prepare specially. I do wild swimming in lakes sometimes, but deep, dark sea water? Forget it,” she laughs.
There’s a playful energy between Sundsbø and Herzigová, built over years of collaboration. “Sølve is a beauty photographer in the truest sense,” she says. “He’s very gentle. You don’t have to overthink it — you’re just in the light, in the moment, and you know it’s going to be right.”
But the Pirelli Calendar of today is not the one she entered in the ’90s. “Back then, it was more about objectifying women — cars, tyres, that whole thing. Now, it’s on another level. It celebrates women for their relevance, their strength. It reflects where we are in culture and society.”
Herzigová’s approach to shoots like this is almost theatrical. “I never play myself,” she says. “It’s always a role, shaped by the photographer and the concept. The hair, the makeup, the styling — it all builds the character. For me, it’s about creating iconic images. There’s so much boring stuff in fashion photography now, so it’s refreshing to work with true masters.”
Off set, her life is far from the fantasy world she steps into on shoots. “I don’t bring work home. I think one day my children will look at these calendars and understand what I was doing when ‘mommy went away’,” she smiles. She’s disciplined about her well-being — meditation, tapping therapy (EFT), no drinking or smoking — and accepts the changes age brings. “It’s part of life. Why stress about it?”
The 2026 Pirelli Calendar by Sølve Sundsbø promises a nod to its history and a deliberate step sideways — from landscapes to elements, outside to in, literal to abstract. And if his track record is anything to go by, it will leave us wondering what world exists just beyond the frame. Perhaps, it will be “dreamlike,” as Herzigová puts it.
photography. courtesy of Alessandro Scotti
words. Gennaro Costanzo
