LAVAZZA 2001 CALENDAR Friends and more: stories around a cup of coffee

The new millennium highlights the imperceptible changes of habits and customs in our society. Lavazza observed these new processes that are becoming part of everyday personal life and, in the 2001 Calendar, it proposed a universal theme, interpreted in a modern manner: friendship.
The title of the calendar is "Friends and more: Stories around a cup of coffee".
Coffee plays a central role in the Calendar. Stories of life and friendship happen around a cup of coffee: moments of complicity, freedom, happiness, and intimacy unroll under the introspective lenses of two photographers.
Lavazza continued its collaboration with the renowned agency Magnum Photos and entrusted the ninth edition of its calendar to the light and poetical style of two great photographers: Martine Franck - author also of a photograph in the 1999 calendar - June, Paris - and Richard Kalvar.
Martine Franck, wife of Henri Cartier-Bresson, has devoted herself to photography since 1963. In 1972, she set up Viva agency with Richard Kalvar and in 1980 she started to collaborate with Magnum Photos. Richard Kalvar, started to work as a photographer in 1967. He alternated trips to Europe with stays in America and his non-conformist style and subtle irony led him to become a Magnum associate in 1975.
The images taken by Martine Franck and Richard Kalvar - both friends and colleagues - are moments of poetry, happiness and daily life where friendship yields the joy of being together. Martine Franck's feminine and light style and Richard Kalvar's ironic style capture in a charming way intense and amusing moments.
Friends and more explores a world of emotions. Two different artistic techniques -photography and literature - give new forms and meanings to images. Lavazza has entrusted Emilio Tadini, a versatile Italian writer, with the task of interpreting the photographs in order to attain their full potentiality. With his twelve stories, Tadini enriches the Calendar's images and adds new shades of meaning.
Tadini writes: There are grand ceremonies.(…) And there are small ceremonies - very small, tiny (…) the ones all of us, without realising, celebrate practically every day, sometimes more than once, with other people - with friends. Such as when someone says to a friend or a group of friends, «How about a coffee?». A few simple words that perfectly express the spirit of all the protagonists of these photographs. Wise words that make everyone's daily rituals even more precious. The twelve photographs show a reality and an imagery that lead to personal suggestions and interpretations.
The previous editions of the Lavazza Calendar are by Helmut Newton (1993-94), Ellen Von Unwerth (1995), Ferdinando Scianna (1996), Albert Watson (1997), Marino Parisotto (1998), twelve Magnum Photos photographers (1999), Elliott Erwitt (2000).