Oliviero Toscani in images and scandals

If fashion has always been a story of creation and transgression, some like Oliviero Toscani have made it their trademark. His legacy is obviously marked by his collaboration with Luciano Benetton, the founder of the Benetton brand, begun in the early 1980s. In 1986, he sparked his first controversy with the image – still unfortunately relevant – of two Israeli and Palestinian teenagers holding a globe in their hands. From the 1990s onwards, almost every Benetton campaign triggered a controversy that was talked about on television news and in schoolyards: the young man on his deathbed, who died of AIDS in 1992; the blood-stained clothes of a soldier found on a battlefield in Bosnia, or the three identical “Hearts” hearts but associated with a color (white, black, yellow). In the documentary, “Fashion Scandals», Loïc Prigent returning to the publicity of the kiss between a sister and a priest in 1991 which made a passerby say: « I don’t see the point in shocking people to sell sweaters ! »

In 2015, the photographer gave us an interview while he was exhibiting photographs of men and women of all body types on the square in front of Saint-Lazare station in Paris.

LE FIGARO. – Since your beginnings in fashion photography in the 1960s, do you have the feeling that clichés have evolved, that certain taboos have fallen?

Oliviero TOSCANI. – You know, I photographed the first cover of She US featuring a black model, Alek Wek, in 1997. Taboos take time to fall… Today, I rather have the impression that women have never been so harassed by the obligation to be beautiful… even beautiful women. They conform to a narrow beauty. We live in a society that admits physical discrimination. Look at women’s magazines: they are made by women who dress their models, as they dressed their dolls. Look at their front page: there is always one of these titles, diet, orgasm, aesthetic medicine… Why? To sell complexes.

Which women do you like to photograph?

Above all, you have to find personalities who accept themselves as they are. It’s impossible to find a beautiful woman if she doesn’t love herself. In my job, I have always worked with models who were just starting out. I’m not interested in photographing modeling workers, a person photographed too much becomes empty. But you women seem to like these empty faces! Me, rather than contacting modeling agencies with such formatted criteria, I have always preferred to spot my models in the street. What we stupidly call in fashion, wild casting as if we were at the zoo. It’s simply street casting. I have been collaborating for a long time with Brice Compagnon (influential casting director in the press and luxury goods industry, Editor’s note) with this idea of ​​choosing looks, personalities, charisma rather than plasticity.

Does fashion still interest you?

I continue to shoot for women’s magazines, always with a certain second degree. The problem with current fashion comes from its lack of audacity and freedom. Marketing has taken precedence over creativity. In the past, fashion influenced socio-political behavior. Fifty years ago, the miniskirt did more than many so-called militant books for female emancipation. However, nowadays, it is the big brands that condition the street and the press with little interest in the individual… Why continue fashion photography? When you are a war reporter, why continue, because you love war?