YES! we’re OPEN

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"YES! we're OPEN": an invitation to get closer, a praise to plural confrontation and diversity, experienced as elements of collective wealth.

With the Lavazza 2023 Calendar, signed by Alex Prager and presented at the Triennale di Milano together with the homonymous volume edited by Fabio Novembre, we have chosen to make our own the message common to cafés at all latitudes. Places where different identities and cultures meet, where you think, chat, do business or dedicate a moment to yourself, almost always in front of a coffee.  Diversity amalgamates to give life to an exchange with the other, without labels of any kind. Because overcoming inequalities and breaking down barriers is a goal within everyone's reach, and the gaze of an artist like Alex Prager stimulates us to do so.

Prager's shots are meticulously crafted, with saturated colors and a retro aesthetic with a 60’s Hollywood flavor. Yet, they are able to capture those flashes of genuineness typical of the most spontaneous photographs. In the interpretation of the Californian artist, the café becomes a both real and metaphorical place. It stimulates a meditation on the uniqueness that distinguishes each individual, embracing those themes of inclusion and overcoming the divisions that animate our vision where, at the center, there is always humanity. The 2023 Calendar adds a further nuance to a ten-year journey in the name of social sustainability, continuing the story of the past two editions: The New Humanity (2021), signed by thirteen world-famous photographers, and I Can Change The World (2022), shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, a world class director of photography. An artistic project with which, explains Francesca Lavazza, Board Member of the Group, «Lavazza wants to interpret and promote important messages related to diversity and inclusion, and it does so by starting from its origins, from the base: coffee, which has always been synonymous with socialization, as well as the many places that serve it».

Among the protagonists of the shots of "YES! we're OPEN", we also find Levante, an Italian singer-songwriter much loved by the public, able to combine commitment and determination with poetry: a thought that is perfectly reflected in the images of the 2023 Calendar.

Ten years of commitment to sustainability, ten years of great photography: the artistic project of the Lavazza Calendar is transformed into a literary and photographic journey, thanks to the book "YES!  we're OPEN", curated by designer Fabio Novembre.

From Turin to Los Angeles, set of the Calendar created by Alex Prager: an exciting narration, punctuated by interviews made by Mario Calabresi to the main protagonists who have accompanied us over the last ten years, including Steve McCurry, Emmanuel Lubezki, David LaChapelle.  A wide-ranging journey that conveys the drives for change, well summarized in the cover of the book signed by the artist Emilio Isgrò and in the introduction written by the economist and Nobel Peace Prize Muhammad Yunus, with an invitation to fighting social inequalities. Because embracing differences and preserving their value is a duty that belongs to everyone.