Lavazza con te partirò

Happy Birthday, Lavazza
Lavazza con te partirò
20 years, 240 months, 170 photographs
Together with the international masters of photography, for 20 years Lavazza has been creating
one-of-a-kind calendars bearing the mark of excellence of the Company not only in Italy, but
around the world.
“Year after year, the relationship between Lavazza and photography grew, consolidated, and
strengthened,” — stated Francesca Lavazza, Corporate Image Director of the Group — “Both the
calendar and the coffee are products of our era; both generate energy; both are bound together by
quick consumption, each a perfect copy of the other. Like coffee, photography is always a
relationship: a connection between the person who produces it and the person who appreciates it.”
In fact, since 1993 the greatest photographers have been sharing this adventure with Lavazza,
experiencing the enthusiasm, passion and attention for maximum quality. Thanks to all of them,
the Calendar has become a collector’s item, and since the 2002 edition — with the images by David
LaChapelle — it has become the stylistic signature of the Lavazza’s international advertising
campaign.
The images of the Calendar have since then been displayed in the most important scenarios of the
world, covering the sides of buildings in major European cities, turning these city squares into a sort
of open-air museum.
Helmut Newton, Ellen von Unwerth, Ferdinando Scianna, Albert Watson, David LaChapelle, JeanBaptiste Mondino, Annie Leibovitz and Eugenio Recuenco are just some of the names who have
made this path possible and who are now celebrating, together with Lavazza, in an exhibition at the
Triennale di Milano up to 9 November 2011.
The Lavazza con te partirò project consists of an exhibition, a photographic monograph published
by Rizzoli and Rizzoli International and a digital design: the common threads are seduction and
taste, with the feminine form the driving force behind a voyage towards a parallel universe.
“To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of this initiative, we called upon Fabio Novembre. His
dreamlike and pop-savvy personal style has produced an interpretive pathway that reinterprets
unexpected images. It is a voyage through seduction and taste, pleasure and beauty, all
accompanied by the words of writer Vincenzo Cerami and artwork by Milo Manara — a collection
that cannot help but spur us to continue for another twenty years” — explained Francesca Lavazza.
“Lavazza — tells Fabio Novembre — is an Italian last name that is inflected into the feminine, and
when found following caffè, it seems to indicate a couple formed of indissoluble presuppositions:
Caffè Lavazza, nothing less than a union that has been around since 1895, producing 17 billion cups
of coffee per year all over the world. Those cups of coffee amount to 17 billion moments that
suggest the same flavors while evoking entirely different visual contexts. It is in some ways by
chasing after the magic of those moments that, for over twenty years now, Lavazza has produced
extraordinary photographs bound by the image of a coffee cup as their shared common
denominator.”
THE EXHIBITION
Curated by Fabio Novembre, the exhibition which can be visited up to 9 November 2011 at the
Triennale di Milano makes the concept of travel its own and accompanies visitors on a dreamlike
and immersive path in which the architectural setting comes to life thanks to the project mapping
of the Apparati Effimeri creative group.
“We wanted to pay homage to photography, in particular to the photographers and photographs
that have created this important gallery with us. The exhibition presents twenty years of images:
stops on a journey that is not ending, but is instead taking a new leap towards the future,” tells
Francesca Lavazza.
The exhibition revisits the past 20 years of the Calendar, selecting the most significant images and
presenting them according to a new creative interpretation: immersed and surrounded by images
that decompose and recompose, the visitor enters the exhibition and is led through a true labyrinth,
symbol of the continuous alternating of reality and dream, of voyage and return.
“I wanted to trace the common thread that unites several of the images chosen for this twentyyear anniversary calendar, attempting to tell a story that finds its full, complete dimension as a
reality enriched by the drawings by Milo Manara and the words of Vincenzo Cerami,”stated Fabio
Novembre. “Twenty years not conceived as an anniversary, but as a real birthday, — he continued
— the twentieth birthday of a girl born in 1992, taking inspiration from Valerie, the young
protagonist of the most recent shots of Ellen von Unwerth for Lavazza.”
A good installation project should always consider the audience as an integral
part of the scene, making it both spectator and actor; the public should be
encouraged to cross the threshold that usually divides the work of art from its
audience. Following these criteria, the exhibition at the Triennale di Milano –
Teatro dell’Arte, is a total immersion in the world of art photography that
Lavazza has developed over the past 20 years of calendars. The screen grabs
the scene encompassing part of the audience and projecting on its threedimensional surface a unique story of travel and seduction making use of the
project mapping technique. A ladder suspended in the void gives viewers the
opportunity to cross the stream of projected images, to pass through the
curtain and find themselves in the proscenium area, sucked into a vortex of
architecture that reveals every page of this unknown story. A final section will
represent the past with the 19 previous calendars, the present with the 2012
calendar with inscription by the respective photographers, and the future with
the photographs from the photo scouting talents.
© Fabio Novembre
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC MONOGRAPH
Published by Rizzoli and Rizzoli International and curated by Fabio
Novembre, the photographic monograph is a volume suspended
between art and publishing and whose graphic design by the
Berlin-based studio onlab tells the story of these twenty years of
Calendars, the 2012 edition and those yet to come.
The voyage, seduction, duality, gravity and antigravity.
Unexpected changes of scale, nudity and disguises, rendering the
itinerary through imagery and the words of the book, a true
adventure through time and space.
“Valerie became the protagonist of our story, a Beatrice who
accompanies us on a voyage toward redemption; an Alice who
takes us on a tour through a labyrinth of dreams; a Lolita who, while every bit a nymph, needs no
Mr. Humbert. This staggering of language provides an oneiric photographic dimension, creating a
journey to be taken between the walls of a single room the day before our protagonist turns twenty
years old, ultimately to return in flesh and blood, the absolute master of her destiny,” tells Fabio
Novembre.
Thanks also to the original drawings by Milo Manara and the narration of Vincenzo Cerami, the
volume gives a voice to the journey through seduction and taste on which Fabio Novembre’s
reinterpretation is based and will also include the 2012 Lavazza Calendar which increasingly
celebrates the intimate relationship between photography and the espresso, a ritual which is never
equal to itself.
The volume will be available from major museum bookstores and from selected Italian and
international bookshops.
Valerie - The Great Journey
Abstract from the text of Vincenzo Cerami
In the end, Valerie decides the time has come for
the Great Journey. She looks herself over in the
mirror, slipping on high heels before she’s even
gotten dressed. She says to herself, “My dear,
we don’t know if we’ll be back some day, if we’ll
be stronger or any wiser. Or maybe just crazier”.
(...)
Seated atop an overpacked trunk that refused to close, Valerie speaks to her reflection:
“My dear, as a first step let’s stop by the side of the road and wait for destiny to decide
whether or not we deserve a traveling companion, or to give us the time and space
necessary to choose one of our own, of our own free will. From darkness we’ve come, and
into darkness we will one day return. Now that’s a great journey. Life is the shortest road.”
(...)
“I’m twenty years old. They told me to live in my own space because it’s mine. They told me
to live in my own times because they’re mine. They took away the borders, the boundaries...”
She turns her back on a papier-mâché scenario that was intended to sew a false, superficial,
and iridescent reality over her. If the journey, after a permanent childhood and
adolescence, one made of dreams and unrealities, can’t help her find herself but will drag
her down to lose herself among theater masks, then it would make more sense to stay at
home and continue to fantasize about nothing. No, she needed to get her feet back on the
ground.
(...)
For now, Valerie travels all over the world. But one day, when that kiss finally arrives, she’ll
stop and say: “At last I’ve arrived!” The Great Journey has taught her that the kiss of love
can take you further than you’d ever imagined.
(...)
She feels like a wristwatch: her hand has wound all the way around to start a second round
that’s exactly like the first. Everything that Valerie was supposed to see has been seen.
Everything she was supposed to touch has been touched. Everything she was supposed to
learn has been learned.
(...)
For a long period the young traveler,
like Ulysses on the island of the Lotus
Eaters, remains trapped in the sorcery
of sweet life. Having swallowed the
stupefying lotus plant, the sailors of
the King of Ithaca have lost all sense
and reason, just as Valerie loses
herself in a sort of delirious existence,
driving by the fickle twists of the wind.
In her visions, she is falling into the
abyss while an airplane in flames
smashes into the Cordillera of the
Andes.
(…)
Somebody who travels without a
destination is actually standing still,
and one day that person will say that
the long voyage around the world has
taught him that you learn more
without ever leaving home; and that
as long as you use your imagination,
you can even take a 1950s rocket ship
to enjoy a dense, hot cup of coffee
beneath the starry skies of Mars.
(…)
Seated before a steaming cup, Robert,
sweating with excitement, tells her how,
for at least the past year, he has been
collecting female figures possessing
magical charisma. They are enchantresses,
like mermaids, at once fragile and
threatening. Men need to be a little afraid
of them, and women need to imitate them,
in order to dominate men in their own right.
(…)
She’s drawn by the reflection of a full moon
shining on the water of an artificial lake, set
among large cement buildings. Who knows
if a few swans are sleeping serenely among
its shadowy ravines? She sees a shadow
move, a beaver or squirrel that hasn’t made
it home yet. In the meantime, just to hear
the sound of her voice, she whispers in
singsong, “Valerie, let’s get out of here, let’s
go to Greenland, to China, to India ... by
plane, by train, by sky car, let’s tour the
world in eighty days with stops in Ecuador
and nearby places. In the end the world’s
the same everywhere, north and south, here
and there. The moon’s as white in Milan as in Vietnam; a McDonald’s in Berlin is the same
in Beijing. We can eat pizza in Bogotá and drink champagne in Casablanca.”
(…)
The time has come to take account.
When the journey grows too long, it’s
no longer a voyage: it’s an escape.
Hours and hours aboard airplanes,
moving from one time zone to the
next, circling the world, and all in vain.
The best thing to do? Strap on a
parachute and merrily leap out into
the open air, perhaps with a little cup
of coffee in one hand.
(...)
Suddenly there is a crash in Valerie’s room, a sort of thunderclap that sets a CD with the
Italian song “Con te partirò” (“I’ll Leave with You”) to playing. The girl finds herself tossed
down onto her bed, and draws a long sigh. She lies there for a little while, her eyes closed,
listening to the music that is slowly drawing her back to reality.
(...)
But the birthday cake has arrived, decked out with twenty little candles. They will have to
wait until their lips taste like raspberry Bavarian cream.
THE DIGITAL PROJECT
The digital project — curated by the Studio Novembre and created by the Neotokio Agency —
combines graphic research with avant-garde digital technologies.
“For years we have used concise, immediate and evolving languages, and in this perspective the
Calendar has represented the cutting edge of our communications” – remembers Francesca
Lavazza -, “a stimulating starting point thanks to the blend of video art, photography and the
Internet”.
On the website 20calendars.lavazza.com users have been able to surf through images of the
calendars of the past 20 years and discover videos and exclusive interviews, as well as to take part
in the photo scouting launched by Lavazza to mark the twentieth anniversary. This initiative was
also the ideal occasion for officially launching the Lavazza con te partirò project website on August
2, which from its first days has experienced great success, also thanks to the special iPhone
application, arriving at a total of over 50.000 page views and constant access through the most
popular social networks.
The photo scouting project has combined creativity and new photographic languages, with the
objective of involving new talents: among the more than 6000 images sent, a jury composed of
Steve McCurry, Fabio Novembre and Francesca Lavazza selected three images to accompany those
from the 20 Lavazza Calendars in the dedicated exhibition, highlighting the commitment of Lavazza
to designer photography and the search for promising young talents from the world of photography.
THE SELECTED PHOTO SCOUTING IMAGES
Unexpected ascents. Surprising glances. Longed for returns. In the photographs by Gloria Emili,
Serena Fabrizio, and Michele Michelsanti, the world has no borders, no defined trajectories, no
adhesion to written rules. For them, different techniques and diverse points of view have the
common denominator of the concepts of voyage, seduction and poetry. From the colour hinted by
a flock of birds in flight and the architectural charm of a Roman café (it’s Venice!), to the intensity
of a body in abandon in front of a cup of coffee: the images of the three young photographers
recounts a unique story in which dreams and reality intertwine, exchanging sunrise for dusk,
awakening for waiting.
Gloria Emili, forty-seven years old from Castel Gandolfo in
the Rome province, works as a computer analyst and
photographer – a passion discovered fifteen years ago.
With a grand love for still life, conceptual photos and the
photographic work of Luigi Ghirri, from whom she got the
idea of taking a “voyage” with the objective of giving
meaning to what the eyes cannot see, she started taking
photographs and designing images in collaboration with
the photgraphy association Foto Club Castelli Romani in
Albano Laziale. Here the confrontation with other photographs allowed her to gain more
confidence with the camera and to discipline her own personal technique.
Serena Fabrizio, 31 years old, was born and currently lives
in Turin. With a degree in Communications, she works in a
service centre for voluntary associations, handling graphics
and communications for non-profit organisations. She is an
avid fan of travel, books, basketball, African dance and for
the last few years, also of photography. Thanks to the
Canon she received as a wedding gift, she is refining her
ability to capture the moments of beauty that fill her days
and her trips.
Michele Michelsanti, born in Foligno 26 years ago,
encountered photography after graduating, recounting the
nightlife in his region through his photographs. He moved
to Florence in 2009, where his passion led him to register
at the Italian Academy of Fashion and Design. Here he
began to affirm himself as a fashion photographer and
blogger, documenting the city’s nightlife through
collaboration with diverse Fashion companies and the local
Corriere della Sera office, where he writes a column about
local trends. Creating is fundamental for him: he reinvents himself in each and every shot, leaving a
small piece of himself in every photograph.
Contributors - Biografie
Fabio Novembre
Fabio Novembre was born in Lecce in 1966. In 1984 he moved
to Milan where he graduated in Architecture at the
Polytechnic. In 1992 he lived in New York, where he attended
a course on filmmaking at New York University. That was when
he met Anna Molinari, who in 1994 commissioned his first
interior architecture design: the Anna Molinari Blumarine shop
in Hong Kong. That same year he returned to Milan and
started his own firm. Over the years he has continued to work
in the field of design for companies such as Driade, Cappellini,
Meritalia, Flaminia, and Casamania, and he has also designed
showrooms and boutiques for some of the most important
brand names: Tardini in New York; the Blumarine stores in
London, Singapore, and Taipei; the flagship stores for Meltin’
Pot in New York and Milan; as well as the Stuart Weitzman
stores across the world, from Rome to Beijing. In 2008 the city
of Milan devoted a large exhibition to his work called Insegna anche a me la libertà degli rondini,
which was held at the Rotonda exhibition space on Via Besana. In 2009 the Triennale Design
Museum in Milan invited him to create and curate a show on his own work called Il fiore di
Novembre. In 2010 he designed and curated the exhibition design representing the city of Milan at
the Italian Pavilion of the Shanghai Expo.. Foto di Settimio Benedusi
Francesca Lavazza
Francesca Lavazza was born in Turin in 1969. She has
made a career out of her creative spirit. After working for
many years for the advertising agency Armando Testa,
she moved to New York to take screenwriting courses at
the New York Film Academy. When she returned to Italy
in 2001, she found a place for herself in the family
business, and since July 2005 she has been the Corporate
Image Director at Lavazza in charge of communications.
She is a member of the Board of Directors for the
company, which does business in over ninety countries and is one of the most important coffee
companies in the world. Her passions — screenwriting, photography and design — have often
combined with the Company’s communication strategies as is demonstrated by the calendar
project and the many photographic exhibitions and the design-related events that the Company has
promoted and supported throughout the years.
Marco Testa
Synthesis, irony, and the evolved vision of communication. Marco Testa
is the president of the company that since 1956 has signed the most
important and memorable advertising campaigns in Italy: from
Caballero Lavazza to Olio Sasso, from Birra Peroni to Papalla, from
Pippo the hippopotamus created for Lines by Marco’s father Armando,
to the Gold Lion for Telecom, not to mention the success of the Tim
saga, billboards for Esselunga, the “Pugno” Pirelli (the Pirelli Fist), “No
Martini No Party", and Fiat’s and Lancia’s most recent campaigns. The
Armando Testa advertising firm has always been Lavazza’s partner in
communications and it has created all its most successful campaigns,
including the calendars for which this book celebrates the twentieth
anniversary. Number one in Italy, over the years the agency has been
transformed into a fully fledged Gruppo Integrato: the Palazzo della Communicazione. Today the
Gruppo Amando Testa counts about four hundred collaborators, three locations in Italy, four in
Europe (Madrid, London, Frankfurt, Paris) and it is proud to create campaigns for more than one
hundred clients ranging from small but successful brand names to great leaders on the national and
multinational markets. The creative school founded by Armando continues to look to the future
with the same passion as always: this was especially acknowledged in 2009 when it was awarded
the Gold Lion for Mixed Media, a category at the International Cannes Film Festival that stands for
modernity.
Vincenzo Cerami
Vincenzo Cerami was born in Rome, where he now lives.
While in middle school he studied classical literature with
Pier Paolo Pasolini, whom he helped to make Uccellacci e
uccellini. He published his first novel, Un borghese piccolo
piccolo, with a foreword by Italo Calvino, in 1976. A very
successful film based on the book was directed by Mario
Monicelli and starred Alberto Sordi. His literary works
include: Amorosa presenza, Addio Lenin, Tutti cattivi,
Ragazzo di vetro, La lepre and Fantasmi. He has also written
Gli occhi di Pandora, illustrated by Milo Manara, Pensieri così, and La sindrome di Tourette. His
screenplays include: Casotto, Il minestrone e Vipera by Sergio Citti; Salto nel vuoto and Gli occhi, la
bocca by Marco Bellocchio; Colpire al cuore, I ragazzi di via Panisperna and Porte aperte by Gianni
Amelio; The Little Devil, Johnny Stecchino, The Monster, Life is Beautiful, Pinocchio and The Tiger
and the Snow by Roberto Benigni. His many years of collaboration with the musician Nicola Piovani
have led to the production, among others, of the performances Le Cantate del Fiore e del Buffo,
Romanzo musicale, La Pietà, and La Cantata dei Cent’anni. He has brought to the theater and
played a role in such works as Lettere al metronomo, Italia mia, Viaggio nel silenzio, and Una vita di
parole. In 2009 he directed Philip Glass’ opera-ballet Le streghe di Venezia (The Witches of Venice).
In 2005 the president of the Italian Republic awarded him with a gold medal for services rendered
to culture and art, and in 2006 he received an honorary degree in European literature and philology
from the University of Pisa. As a journalist, Cerami has written articles on a variety of subjects for
numerous newspapers and he holds creative writing courses in universities in Italy as well as
abroad.
Milo Manara
Milo Manara debuted in the world of comics in the late 1960s
as the author of erotic crime stories for the Genius series. He
pursued this sexy-erotic strand with the character of the Corsair
Jolanda de Almaviva and after several works for Il Corriere dei
Ragazzi he was hired to do prestigious work for Larousse and
Mondadori and with Almodovar for La feu aux entrailles in 1993.
His stories include: Il profumo dell’invisibile (1986), Candid
Camera (1988), L’uomo delle nevi (1979) and the western
Quattro dita (L’uomo di carta). In 1982 Playmen began
publishing the comic strip “Il gioco” in installments. Manara’s
success as an erotic comic strip writer was consolidated in Italy
starting in 1984, when Edizioni Nuova Frontiera used the episodes previously published in Playmen
to release a complete anthology entitled Il gioco; thanks to the international success of the book
the artist became known as the “master of eros” and was delivered to the history of comics. In
1983, for texts by Hugo Pratt, Manara illustrated Tutto ricominciò con un’estate indiana published
in the magazine Corto Maltese; it is considered a masterpiece for both authors. In 1986, for the
magazine Totem he began to publish Il profumo invisibile, featuring the very popular and seductive
leading character Miele. In 1989 Corto Maltese published the comic strip Viaggio a Tulum based on
a subject by Federico Fellini. In Grifo he published Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna detto Fernet, which was
adapted for the screen by Federico Fellini. In 2004 he began illustrating I Borgia for the subject by
Alejandro Jodorowsky. In late 2009 Marvel Italia-Panini Comics published Gli incredibili X-Men.
Ragazze in fuga, illustrated by Manara and written by Chris Claremont.
PRESS OFFICE
LAVAZZA
Marilù Brancato +39 345 3972860
[email protected]
Simona Busso +39 335 5492296
[email protected]
Edoardo Fulio Bragoni +39 340 3872907
[email protected]
STUDIO NOVEMBRE
Michela Bado
+39 02 504104
[email protected]
EDELMAN - Irene De Bernardi
+39 348 300 13 34
[email protected]
STUDIO SUITNER – Marianna Carlini
+39 011 8196450
[email protected]
LIBRO RIZZOLI
Federica Fulginiti
+39 335 631 66 26
[email protected]
LA TRIENNALE DI MILANO
+39 02 72434247/05
[email protected]
Lavazza con te partirò
13 October – 9 November 2011
Opening Hours: 10:30 to 20:30 Tuesday to Sunday – Thursday and Friday 10:30 to 23:00
Triennale di Milano – Viale Alemagna 6, Milan - Italy
Free Admission