MILAN, Italy – As a place where the world’s cultures and identities can meet, there’s nothing quite like a bar or café. For coffee, social drink par excellence, has by its very nature instilled in the places where it’s drunk that unique characteristic of facilitating encounters. Bars, meaning cafés too thanks to a happy semantic affinity with the raw material itself, have for over two centuries been natural meeting points for different cultures all over the world.
They are famously inclusive places where encounters positively blur differences. With its 2023 Calendar, designed and produced even this year under the creative direction of agency Armando Testa, Lavazza is embracing a message conveyed by bars and cafés at all latitudes, YES! we’re OPEN, a neighbourly invitation to come in and enjoy an experience of pleasure and conviviality.
The Lavazza Calendar
Following the pandemic and at a point in time when the complexity of events is generating obstacles and divisions throughout society, Lavazza is inviting everyone to be open and see the differences between us as a valuable resource that enriches the community.
The 2023 Calendar by photographer Alex Prager and the book by Fabio Novembre share the same title, YES! we’re OPEN, and both embody its underlying concept, the beauty of a humanity that rediscovers its vitality and curiosity, expressing individuality and connecting individuals.
Through art – expressions of individual talent and creativity that become a common heritage – Lavazza continues along the path traced by the history of its Calendar and the messages, at once universal and topical, it has sought to convey. Bringing down barriers is an objective within everyone’s reach, especially when stimulated by the vision of an artist like Alex Prager.
Humanity and coffee
Every little story, like every cup of coffee served every day, is a potential source of emotions, beauty and sharing that’s right there, in easy reach, waiting for someone to seize it.
Bars remind us that humanity cannot be labelled and categorized and that it’s only through mutual respect that we can share the joy of an unexpected meeting, a smile from a stranger, the feeling of being part of the world’s theatre of inexhaustible wonders.
In the 2023 Calendar, the bar is a place both real and metaphorical, an ambience where Alex Prager studies the uniqueness of the individual to highlight their value, thus embracing the theme of our common humanity and celebrating our differences, concepts that animate Lavazza’s vision and are so central to our world today.
Prager’s series of images – broad views alternating with revealing close-ups – are characterized by their meticulous construction and subtly provocative humour, while her taste for quotation, one of the main characteristics of her photography, mixes together allusions to classic Hollywood, fragments of experimental cinema, fiction and hyperrealism, pop iconography and staged photography.
The art project
The result is a composition of saturated colours, unpredictable and vibrant like the lives of the people she chooses. It’s a Calendar in which the images speak for themselves, with no need for captions, and reach the viewer with the warmth and restorative capacity of the finest coffee.
“With this new art project,” says Lavazza Group board member Francesca Lavazza about the new Calendar, “Lavazza intends to convey important messages about diversity and inclusion, and it does so by starting out from its own origins and base, coffee, which has always been a byword for sociality, like the countless places that serve it.
Over the last ten years, the Calendar has become a sort of manifesto for us, in which we use art as a means of focusing on things we feel deeply about and are in line with the company’s vision and commitments”.
The 2023 edition is a new chapter in the story of sustainability written by the Calendar over the last ten years. It takes up the story of the last two editions, namely The New Humanity (2021), by 13 world-famous photographers, and I Can Change The World (2022), by Emmanuel Lubezki, one of the world’s top cinematographers.
YES! we’re OPEN
YES! we’re OPEN is an art project that aims to be an instrument of change as well. It addresses a broad public and has special focus on young people. Thanks to the vision of its artists and ambassadors, it helps raise people’s awareness, just like one of the figures appearing in this edition, Levante, an Italian singer-songwriter much loved by the public. Sensitive to the differences that separate us and capable of channelling commitment and drive into her poetry, she fits perfectly with the imagery and concept of the 2023 Calendar.
“The bar is once again the centre of gravity of our stories. The bar as an ideal place in which all differences are accepted without labels or hierarchies. Micro-stories full of humanity, told with the unmistakeable style of Alex Prager, as well as the richness of her scenic composition, her non judgemental stance, and her capacity to read harmony between the lines of truth and fantasy. It would be great if the harmony we find in Alex’s photos existed everywhere in the world,” commented Michele Mariani, executive creative director at Armando Testa Group.
The event at the Triennale di Milano will also be an opportunity for the public launch of Fabio Novembre’s book YES! we’re OPEN.
Social sustainability
Following on from Lavazza’s decision to celebrate the last ten years of its Calendar’s focus on environmental and social sustainability, YES! we’re OPEN is a round-the-world trip, in book form, focusing on the values that have always guided the company and all the work that went into ten years of intense creative activity and concrete initiatives for change.
Produced under the art direction of Novembre Studio, this hybrid publication also features a cover design by artist Emilio Isgrò, commissioned by Lavazza to give a poetic rendering of the concept of travel, and an introduction by Muhammad Yunus, the world-renowned economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on microcredit.
At once a book of photographs, a travelogue and “behind the scenes” documentation, it visits the Calendar photo shoot locations in a sequence of interviews in which Mario Calabresi listens to the main protagonists who’ve worked on the Lavazza Calendar in the last decade, including long-standing collaborators Carlo Petrini, Steve McCurry, Massimo Bottura, Sonia and Jeffrey Sachs, who share the same vision.
“Producing this volume was a wonderful opportunity to relive the company’s journey over the last ten years in the words of the people who inspired us along the way and to chronicle the evolution of our sustainability issues and projects and our virtuous encounter with the language of art, which has always been an instrument of dialogue and amplification of messages,” commented Lavazza Group board member Francesca Lavazza.
A call to action
Starting out from Turin, where the company has its roots, this enthralling visual and verbal adventure went right round the world, stopping off in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America before arriving in Los Angeles, where the 2023 Calendar was produced.
A unique call to action for a humanity that’s richly faceted, well informed, inclusive and focused on tomorrow.
Photographer Alex Prager creates the new Lavazza Calendar (2023), crowning the bar as symbolic home to a new humanity.
Lavazza and art
From the very outset, Lavazza entrusted the creation of its Calendar to outstanding internationally renowned photographers.
Over the years, the various editions have borne the names of great masters of the art, of the calibre of Helmut Newton, Steve McCurry, David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz and Emmanuel Lubezki, each passing on the baton for this formidable appointment with art and communication.
The Calendar has always registered the vibrations of the moment, but there’s more to it than this: thanks to the vision of the artists and the determination of the brand, it was able to gradually become a true cultural object, from sophisticated artwork to vehicle of Lavazza’s social and corporate values.
The new edition, entitled YES! we’re OPEN, conceived and realised under the creative direction of Armando Testa agency, is the latest tile in the mosaic of calendars dedicated to sustainability that was begun ten years ago and which has now been carried forward by the talent of photographer and director Alex Prager. YES! we’re OPEN is the third variation on the theme of a new humanity (launched in 2020) seen through the eyes of an artist capable of revealing the emotions and anxieties harboured in every individual.
Prager’s 12 photographs – outstanding in their care over detail – present highly evocative scenes deliberately lacking in precise tem- poral references: her artful mixing of different apparel, styles, decor details and settings creates an effect of am- biguity that heightens the internal tension of the images. Prager’s world of bars and cafés floats midway between post-pop and surrealism, where fiction and truth are inextricably entwined and so embody the reality in which we live.
Sharing emotions
A reality that seems, especially in the last two years, to be increasingly out of our control, but where an open mind, kindness to others, curiosity and awareness of what we have in common can unite and strengthen us. As Prager says: “I think the most important thing about being alive is the experiences we have in common, the emotions we share, the people who connect with one another and thereby deepen their understanding of themselves and life”.
We share the same emotions but we’re all profoundly different, albeit interconnected. A familiar, special place like a bar reminds us every day, with the ritual of coffee, what it means to be alive, what it means to be human.
And humanity is the most urgent focus in fact, a humanity on which Lavazza has been concentrating since 2021 with its project The New Humanity. For Lavazza, 2021 was an important year of post-pandemic reflection and concen- tration on our species in a mature neo-humanistic vision within a framework of environmentalism.
The most recent calendar is I Can Change The World (2022), in which Emmanuel Lubezki, the world-famous cinematographer, portrays six figures – four women and two men, including US singer-songwriter Ben Harper – who are actively engaged in environmental and social change through their art.
YES! we’re OPEN has now completed an ideal trilogy on the new humanity thanks to the work of an artist with a highly personal, indeed unmistakeable visual style. It’s time to “tell new stories”, just like those in the new Lavazza Calendar.
Alex Prager
Alex Prager is an artist and filmmaker who creates elab- orately staged scenes that draw inspiration from a wide range of influences and references, including Hollywood cinema, experimental films, popular culture, and street photography. She deliberately casts and stages all of her works, merging past and contemporary sources to create a sense of ambiguity. Her familiar yet uncanny images depict worlds that synthesize fiction and reality and evoke a sense of nostalgia. Prager cultivates the surreal in her photographs and films, creating emotional moments that feel like a fabricated memory or dream.
Each photograph captures a moment frozen in time, in- viting the viewer to “complete the story” and speculate about its narrative context. Prager’s work often makes the viewer aware of the voyeuristic nature of photogra- phy and film, establishing the uneasy feeling of intruding upon a potentially private moment.
The highly choreo- graphed nature of her photographs and films exposes the way images are constructed and consumed in our media-saturated society.
Prager’s work has been exhibited globally in institu- tions such as FOAM Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2019); Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland (2018); The Photographers’ Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2018); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2014); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2013); and is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York, among other international public and private collections.
She has received numerous awards, including the FOAM Paul Huf Award (2012), The Vevey International Photography Award (2009), and the London Photographic Award (2006). Her editorial work has been featured in prominent publications, including Vogue, New York Magazine, New York Times Magazine and W, and her film series Touch of Evil, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, won a 2012 Emmy award. Her first major public commission, Applause, for Times Square Arts: Midnight Moment, New York, took place in summer 2017.
About Lavazza Group
Lavazza, founded in Turin in 1895, has been owned by the Lavazza family for four generations. Today the Group is one of the leading players on the global coffee scene, with turnover of over € 2.3 billion and a portfolio of top brands that lead their respective markets, such as Lavazza, Carte Noire, Merrild and Kicking Horse. It is active in all business sectors and has operations in 140 markets, with 9 manufacturing plants in 6 countries and over 4,200 collaborators all over the world.
The Group’s global presence is the result of over 125 years of growth and the more than 30 billion cups of Lavazza coffee produced every year are a testament to a remarkable success story, with the goal of continuing to offer the best coffee possible, in all forms, by focusing on every aspect of the supply chain, from the selection of the raw material to the product in the cup.
Lavazza Group has revolutionised coffee culture by investing continuously in research and development: from the intuition that marked the company’s earliest success – the coffee blend – to the development of innovative packaging solutions; from the first espresso sipped in Space to the dozens of industrial patents. The ability to be ahead of the times is also reflected in the focus on sustainability – economic, social and environ- mental – which has always been a benchmark for guiding corporate strategies. “Awakening a better world every morning” is the corporate purpose of Lavazza Group, with the aim of creating sustainable value for share- holders, collaborators, consumers and the communities in which it operates, combining competitiveness with
social and environmental responsibility.
