A reflection of extreme conditions.
We partnered with Paolo Pellegrin to capture the uniqueness of the CUPRA Formentor merging with a place that is home to some of the most majestic yet threatened surroundings in the world.
The man behind the lens
Paolo Pellegrin is one of the world’s leading photojournalists and has been a member of Magnum Photos since 2005. He has documented many of this generation’s major disasters and conflicts, from revolutions to wars and tsunamis. Pellegrin constantly strives for his work to “create a bridge” and uses photography to say something that goes deeper below the surface. With a refined and sensitive eye, his desire is to produce work for his audience that vibrates and resonates with them.
Capturing an evolving ecosystem
This photo exhibition began with our journey to Greenland for the Extreme-E racing championship, an all-electric off-road series that takes place in some of the most extreme and untouched locations on the planet: desert, rainforest, glaciers, ocean, and the Arctic.
The championship was created to spark adrenaline in the audience but at the same time there was a vision to inspire awareness and change. The objective was to transform these epic open landscapes into racetracks without leaving behind any carbon footprint thanks to the electric SUVs we used to race with.
To honour this concept, we teamed up for a photographic campaign with Pellegrin and set out across Greenland in the CUPRA Formentor, capturing the remote landscapes and ever-changing vast and raw conditions in a vehicle that reflects the bold strength of the world’s largest island.
Driving the change
This shoot has a dual nature. It evokes an overwhelming sense of stillness and in parallel it represents the extremely sudden changes in nature that occur before our eyes. It’s a campaign that represents the soul of the CUPRA brand, that of freedom, breaking through the monotony and feeling the rush of pure emotion, while at the same time reconnecting with our surroundings and raising awareness to preserve our planet.
Pellegrin made a point of placing a critical view on the complexities of humankind and nature. The triptychs that he created explore this in depth, where the shots of the car and the landscape are placed side by side, merging and contrasting. The smooth surfaces of the car mirror the rough yet delicate facets of nature, resonating the need for our attention and our action.
The campaign relates the unique beauty of the CUPRA Formentor with the astounding and pure immensity of our ecosystems, the ones we are so fortunate to still be able to experience. Greenland and other majestic, uncontained parts of the world are under threat, and we need to come together to fight, protect and preserve their freedom, not for ourselves, but for nature itself.
