Last week, Ethan James Green was announced as the 2025 Pirelli Calendar photographer and has been moving at a million miles per hour since. Green cast his lens on some of the world's most coveted names in fashion and culture, continuing the project's legacy of bringing together leading figures from across the zeitgeist with esteemed photographers. The full list of confirmed talent includes Simone Ashely, John Boyega, Hunter Schafer, Hoyeon Jung, Padma Lakshmi, Jodie Turner-Smith, Vincent Cassel, Elodie Di Patrizi, Connie Fleming, Ethan James Green himself, Martine Gutierrez, and Jenny Shimizu.
Following the final shoot date, Green flew to London to share a behind-the-scenes look at what went into making the calendar. We caught Green in a west London hotel suite, where he fought off jet lag to talk us through the project with a warm humility. Relaxed and sitting cross-legged, wearing a brown shirt unbuttoned to his chest, he settled on the other side of a wooden coffee table crammed with glossy printouts, which occasionally caught the light beaming through the window.
Getting the gig
Green's journey into photography started in front of the camera when he signed with Ford Models, moving to New York, where he starred in campaigns for Calvin Klein and posed for Steven Meisel. Since making the move to the other side of the lens, Green's commercial work has largely been in the fashion space for brands including Alexander McQueen, Fendi, Helmut Lang, Miu Miu, and Prada.
Green's first book Young New York released in 2019 and documented a collection of portraits of friends and collaborators in downtown NYC, exploring the scope of queer identity. This year, his second book, Bombshell, subverted the idea of a stereotypical bombshell by inviting his subjects to style and pose themselves. This practice sees his subjects at ease in front of the lens, allowing Green to capture a momentary closeness that preserves the moment in time, all skills that he brought to the table for The Cal.
His work in the fashion industry and published work helped put him on Pirelli's radar when it was looking for its next calendar photographer. "They reached out in January. It started with Pierregiorgio (Del Moro), the casting director for Pirelli, and I've worked with him a lot in fashion. He just texted me and was like, 'What do you think about Pirelli?' I said, 'Pirelli is amazing!' He was like, 'Okay, cool, I work with them, and they're going to reach out to your agent,'" he shared with us.
What went into the calendar?
The Cal was Green's first time shooting for a calendar, applying his know-how from fashion and portrait photography to the project, this time shooting in a square format to ensure that it still felt "very calendar." He merged his trademark frankness with his encyclopaedic knowledge of The Cal's early 90s moments, like Herb Ritts' "A Homage to Women," which saw a killer cast of supermodels lensed by the legendary portrait photographer. "I wanted to do something sexy, something classic. I love the Richard Avedon studio pictures in the '90s and the Herb Ritts pictures in the '90s that were on the beach, so I wanted to do both and have this return to sexiness."
Shooting celebrities
This year's calendar is packed with muses, models, and mega stars, including Hunter Schafer, Connie Fleming, and John Boyega, who were captured in Virginia Key Beach Park in Miami. Pirelli teased the launch ahead of the calendar's official release with a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot. And if Hunter Schafer staring down the lens in a sheer dress and Vincent Cassel posing while partially submerged in the ocean is anything to go by, then it's set to be a belter.
But unlike other photographers, Green approaches big-name talents with a creative distance that separates him from his peers, stemming from his upbringing in Michigan, away from pop and celebrity culture. This is something he admits openly. "Usually, what will happen if I'm photographing somebody who is famous is that I will not research them, and I will photograph them. After I'll go and see the movie, or I'll go and see the music. I'll usually really enjoy it, and it's fun to go backwards in that way. Because [I grew] up so disconnected with it, I haven't felt this urge to really dive in, and maybe that separation helps," he told us.
Despite this separation from his subjects, green maintains a close relationship with his collaborators on the project, who helped build a greater sense of trust with his subjects. "For something like this, where people are getting stripped down, and it's a very vulnerable state to be in, and by making it about collaboration, it has allowed each person to feel more comfortable. I show them what we're doing, I want it to be something where the subject will walk away and look back and be like, 'I like this picture.' It's always something that's very important to me," he told us before finishing his statement by adding, "Collaboration is the way we get there."
Yeah, Green might be unfazed by the world of celebrity, but is he taking shooting the 2025 Pirelli Calendar lightly? No chance. "It's a very big moment for a photographer to be asked to do it, and it's been a minute since I've had a milestone like this that feels next level. I'm very excited about the project.
Cover Image: From the backstage of the Pirelli Calendar 2025 by Ethan James Green, photo by Alessandro Scotti ©
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