Strong images for equally powerful fights. For more than 50 years, Oliviero Toscani has used photography to encourage reflection, whether in the field of news or advertising. Some of his campaigns, notably for Benetton, are engraved in the imagination: the kiss of a nun and a priest, human hearts or portraits of children to denounce racism, poignant images of those condemned to death… More than twenty years after these series which shook the world at the time, Oliviero Toscani has only one regret: “I could have done better”. “I should have gone further, had more courage, not listened to the criticism when I listened to them, when I was obliged to listen to them,” he says on the occasion of the release of his book “Oliviero Toscani: More Than Fifty Years of Magnificent Failures”, which became in French “More than 50 years of provocation”. A translation that does not suit this French speaker, who denounces the negative connotation of the term: “’Provocation’, it is not a negative word, it is very important, we must believe in provocation. Provocation is the basis of culture. Without it, there would be no art.”
In his advertising campaigns as in his photographs in general, Oliviero Toscani was a pioneer: “I spoke about AIDS, about racism, in times when we were not talking about it, especially in the world of fashion. People were dying like flies and we…
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