Insolence loses one of its most famous promoters: Oliviero Toscani, the photographer made famous by his provocative advertising campaigns for the Italian clothing brand Benetton, died “following a rare illness” on Monday January 13, 2025, at the age of 82.
The photographer revealed, in August 2024, that he suffered from amyloidosis, an incurable disease which creates insoluble protein deposits in the tissues, explaining that he had lost 40 kilos in one year. “I am not afraid of dying, as long as it is not painful,” he assured the major Milanese daily The Corriere della Sera.
Farewells and tributes
“It is with immense sadness that we announce that today, January 13, 2025, our beloved Oliviero began his next journey,” his family wrote on Instagram.
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“To explain certain things, words are not enough. This is what you taught us. Goodbye Oliviero. Keep dreaming,” Benetton reacted on Instagram by publishing a photo taken by the artist.
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Provocation as a creative engine
Born on February 28, 1942 in the Lombard capital, Oliviero Toscani had built his career on scandal and provocation with campaigns for the clothes of the Italian clothing group Benetton from 1983. Several of his campaigns “United Colors of Benetton” had thus been banned in Italy, but also in France.
These campaigns, which toured the world, notably featured a black woman breast-feeding a white child (1989), a man dying of AIDS and a nun with a cornet kissing a young priest (1992), people sentenced to death in the United States (2000), a young anorexic woman (2007).
Cascading controversies
“I hate artistic photography,” Oliviero Toscani declared in 2010. “Photography becomes art when it provokes a reaction in us, whether it is interest, curiosity or attention.”
Reconnecting with the original provocation, the artist shocked again, at the end of 2011, with photomontages showing the greats of this world kissing each other on the lips (including the Pope and an imam). A 2012 calendar presented by Toscani in Florence represented 12 penises, after that of 2011 which was composed of the same number of female pubes.
Our “Photography” file
Asked by The Courier to know which photo he would choose if he had to choose only one, he replied: “For the whole, for the commitment. It’s not a photo that makes history, it’s an ethical, aesthetic and political choice.” This father of six children born from three unions assured that he “only regrets the things that I have not done, not the ones that I have done”.
