Nick Knight's Pirelli Calendar

For the 2004 Pirelli calendar, photographer Nick Knight and art director Peter Saville shifted the focus from men's desires to those of women. From fourteen conversations with eminent women, Knight constructed narratives for each month based on their most intimate sexual fantasies. The specific author of each remains a secret, but their fantasies are explored in groundbreaking interactives.

Knight, the British photographer who has produced some of the most subversive fashion images of the past 15 years - for the Florence Biennale in 1996, for instance, he photographed fashion designer Alexander McQueen's head apparently being ripped apart - had already turned down the commission several years ago.

"I'd entertained the idea of doing Pirelli before but said no," Knight says, carefully. "I felt there is an argument that the calendar produces demeaning images of women. I don't believe that is entirely true, but there is an element of truth there. I decided if I was going to do the calendar, I was going to try to change it in some way." So he talked to his friend and collaborator, art director Peter Saville, who has worked with pretty much every major fashion designer, along with bands such as Joy Division, New Order and Roxy Music. Saville thought about it for a while and, drawing on his skill at deciphering modern imagery, decided the calendar was, in fact, "an institution of the 21st century" and more than just a girlie calendar.I had lengthy phone conversations, a lot of them very late at night, with these famous women, when I was asking them to tell me: 'What are your thoughts about sex? What are your fantasies?' ," Knight says as we sit in bright autumnal sunshine in his family kitchen in Surrey.

For his Pirelli, Knight made one promise to his confidantes: that he would never reveal whose fantasy was whose. We'll never be certain who said what. Which makes for tantalising viewing as Knight sits at the kitchen table with the calendar in front of him, going through his images, month by month, fantasy by fantasy.So, this (June) was a very specific fantasy. It was about making love in a meadow to an Asian girl," he says, gently. I look and, oh yes, there are two women in a mirage of flowers.

He turns a page "This particular person talked to me about her thoughts on being naked by the light of the moon in a nest at the top of a tree." And there (January) lies the Russian model Natalia curled up on a bed of eiderdown.

He turns another page. "This one (April) is the fantasy about being in a lift and five firemen get in . . ." he trails off and smiles at me. I look closer, and behind the image of a woman wearing thigh-high boots I can make out the suggestion of contorted torsos, limbs and helmets.
Some of the women's fantasies are more explicit. One woman told Knight she fantasised she was Messalina engaged in a shagging match in Imperial Rome, so Knight photographed the model Karolina Kurkova rising victorious above an orgy of her exhausted rivals (October).
Another woman simply told him she dreamt of being the centre of men's desire, wanting to please all of them, all at the same time. Knight's interpretation (December) has the model Pollyanna on a swing as if performing in the round to a group of lechers.
Knight hired a film studio for eight days and closed the doors. His team built the elaborate sets that each woman's fantasy demanded.
The retouching and computer-generated effects that have become synonymous with Knight's work - the "melting" of large areas of the photograph - took two months in post-production.
When they were finished, Pirelli baulked, realising these images were much more sexual than usual. Now, however, the executives say they are delighted with Knight's calendar, which, their spokesmen believe, "blends art with seduction".