The king of provocation is dead. The famous Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, known for his impactful advertising campaigns for the also Italian clothing brand Benetton, died this Monday, January 13 at the age of 82. “It is with immense sadness that we announce that today, January 13, 2025, our beloved Oliviero has embarked on his next journey», Wrote his family in a final post on his Instagram account.
In August 2024, the photographer revealed that he suffered from amyloidosis, a rare and incurable disease which creates insoluble protein deposits in the tissues, which had caused him to lose 40 kilos in one year. Serene, he assured in an interview with the major Milanese daily The Corriere della Sera : “I’m not afraid of dying. As long as it’s not painful.»
A photographer who «hate[ait] artistic photography »
Born on February 28, 1942 in Milan, Oliviero Toscani had built, since 1983, a career as a fashion photographer with the adages, alongside the Benetton brand, of provocation and scandal. Among these campaigns which went around the world and which will be remembered: 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), Isabelle Caro, a French actress weighing 30 kilos and 1.65 meters tall who also wanted denounce the dangers of the cult of thinness.
«I hate artistic photography», he chanted in 2010. For him, “photography becomes art when it provokes a reaction in us, whether it is interest, curiosity or attention.» Mission successful, several of its “United Colors of Benetton” campaigns caused such a reaction that some were banned in Italy, but also in France. The group shocked at the end of 2011 with photomontages showing certain major figures of the world kissing each other on the lips, including the Pope and an imam.
-The same year, Oliviero Toscani presented a calendar composed of twelve women’s pubes. Each month corresponded to an image of pubes and, depending on the month, the fleece was alternately brown, blonde, red, full or discreet. The Florence city council unanimously passed a resolution asking the consortium to withdraw the proceeds from the sale. The following year, he presented a new calendar in Florence, this time with 12 penises.
A committed career
In 2017, for his last solo campaign, he calmed down a little, featuring 28 children (of 13 different nationalities) attending primary school. The photos, softer than the previous ones, which he presented in the pages of Libé, nevertheless carried a political message: to show a Europe which accepts and integrates.
Asked by The Courier to know which photo he would choose if he had to choose only one, he brushed aside the question: “For the whole, for the commitment. It’s not a photo that makes history, it’s an ethical, aesthetic and political choice.”
