Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø returns for the Pirelli 2027 calendar shot in India

Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø is back behind the camera for the 2027 edition of the Pirelli Calendar, once again lending his precise, highly controlled visual style to one of the fashion and photography world’s most watched annual projects. This year’s edition, known as The Cal, is dedicated to India and pairs Sundsbø’s portraiture with a second body of work developed by Indian photographer Avani Rai, continuing a project originally conceived by her late father, Raghu Rai.

It marks the first time in the calendar’s history that two distinct photographic perspectives have been brought together within a single edition, and the first time Sundsbø has returned to the project since shooting the 2026 edition, which celebrated female strength.

Sundsbø’s portraits shot across Jaipur and Ajabgarh

For his contribution, Sundsbø travelled to Rajasthan, shooting portraits at the Jaigarh Fort in Jaipur between the 9th and 11th of May 2026, before moving the set to Ajabgarh in the Alwar district on the 12th. The two locations gave him architecture, surfaces and landscapes that complement his sharply defined, technically precise approach to portraiture.

True to the visual language that has defined his career, Sundsbø leaned into technique, light and carefully constructed composition, focusing his lens on individual identities rather than attempting a broad, panoramic view of the country. The approach let him explore India through specific people rather than through a generic or folkloric depiction of the nation as a whole.

His cast brought together nine figures from film, music, literature and fashion, including actresses Aditi Rao Hydari and Avantika Vandanapu, actress and producer Freida Pinto, musician and composer Anoushka Shankar, poet and performer Rupi Kaur, models Lakshmi Menon and Bhavitha Mandava, author and television host Padma Lakshmi, and photographer Avani Rai herself.

A second perspective from the streets of Old Delhi

Where Sundsbø’s work is tightly composed and studio grade in its precision, the calendar’s second body of work takes a very different route. Avani Rai picked up the project her father, celebrated Indian photographer Raghu Rai, had been developing before his death, shifting it away from its original studio concept and out onto the streets of Old Delhi.

Raghu Rai had initially envisioned pairing his own unpublished archive images with new studio portraits, layering two different moments in time within a single frame. Avani kept that idea of connecting past and present, but chose to apply it directly to the places and communities her father had photographed decades earlier, rather than recreating the concept indoors.

Returning to streets her father had walked and photographed throughout his career, Avani photographed more than 200 people, including residents, street artists, dancers, craftspeople and performers, among them her own mother, Gurmeet Rai. The result places Raghu Rai’s historical images in direct dialogue with the same locations today, highlighting what has stayed the same and what has changed over thirty, forty or fifty years.

India as the calendar’s central subject

For 2027, India becomes the visual and cultural centre of the Pirelli Calendar, told through a multi voice structure that leans into contrast rather than a single unified viewpoint. Geography, language, architecture, memory and everyday life all feed into a portrait of the country built from two very different photographic traditions meeting on the same page.

Sundsbø’s disciplined, fashion driven portraiture and the Rai family’s decades deep documentary practice sit side by side, turning the 2027 edition into as much a project about the continuity of a photographic vision passed between generations as it is a portrait of India itself.

The cast of the Pirelli calendar 2027