(Rome) Oliviero Toscani, the photographer made famous by his provocative advertising campaigns for the Italian clothing brand Benetton, some of which were banned in Italy and France, died Monday at the age of 82 following a rare disease.
Posted at 6:38 a.m.
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’m not afraid of dying. As long as it is not painful,” he then assured in an interview with the major Milanese daily The Corriere della Sera.
“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.
Oliviero Toscani was known for using shocking images, not only to sell products, but also to draw attention to social issues such as AIDS, racism or the death penalty.
Most controversial was the artist’s use of a photograph of David Kirby, an AIDS patient, on his deathbed, surrounded by his family, for a 1992 Benetton campaign.
This campaign sparked an outcry from AIDS activists and a boycott of Benetton, but Toscani remained faithful to his work.
“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.
Born on February 28, 1942 in the Lombard capital, Oliviero Toscani had built his career on scandal and provocation with Benetton campaigns starting in 1983.
These campaigns, which toured the world, notably featured a black woman giving the breast to a white child (1989), and a nun with a cornet kissing a young priest (1992), prisoners sentenced to death in the United States (2000), a young anorexic woman (2007).
Controversial advertising campaigns
His friend and creative director at Benetton, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, praised on Instagram “the intelligence of your images, their relevance and their impertinence”.
“I hate artistic photography,” he said in 2010. “Photography becomes art when it provokes a reaction in us, whether it’s interest, curiosity or attention.”
Several of its “United Colors of Benetton” campaigns were banned in Italy, but also in France.
Reviving the original provocation, the group 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.
In 2007, Toscani photographed nude and anorexic model Isabelle Caro – who later died of the disease – for fashion brand Nolita at a time that coincided with Milan fashion week.
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.”
Toscani and Benetton definitively broke up at the beginning of 2020 after controversial comments by the photographer on the tragedy of the road bridge which collapsed in Genoa in 2018, killing 43 people.
The Benetton family was then the main shareholder of the company ASPI (Autostrade per l’Italie) which managed the bridge at the time of the disaster.
“But who cares if a bridge collapses,” he said during a radio broadcast. He then claimed that his statements had been taken out of context.
Always at Courierthis 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”.
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