Photographer Oliviero Toscani, among the most famous in Italy for his collaborations with fashion magazines, and advertising campaigns for brands such as Valentino, Fiorucci or Benetton, has died at 82. Toscani created some of the most famous and discussed advertisements of the 1990s, choosing complex themes with a strong social impact, for the Venetian clothing company. From the photo depicting a kiss between a nun and a priest, to the campaign against anorexia, to the calendar shot in 2011 for the Genuine Italian Vegetable-Tanned Leather Consortium of Ponte a Egola that tells of his work with the tanning industry.
“If art does not provoke, what good is it?”
This is how Oliviero Toscani defined himself… a free author because “I always say what I think“. Provocateur, revolutionary, divisive: Toscani was all these things at once, defying clichés and opening up to topics that were previously considered taboo. He arrived to photography thanks to his father Fedele, one of Corriere della Sera’s first photojournalists, but studied it at the University of Art in Zurich. In the 1970s he collaborated with magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and began taking photos for advertising campaigns for luxury brands. Then the association with Benetton: since 1982, in fact, Toscani reshaped the brand’s identity by including elements of social denunciation within the advertising campaigns.
The topics chosen
Anti-racism, the death penalty, pro-minority activism-all themes summed up in the famous slogan “United Colors of Benetton“. It was his work at Benetton that launched him internationally. In 1991 he founded Colors magazine and in 1994 the Fabrica center, right along with Benetton. Toscani was for all intents and purposes a revolutionary. Just think of the 1989 shot of a white woman breastfeeding a black baby. Or the one created in 1991, years when many individuals were victims of AIDS, portraying a series of colored condoms to support prevention.
Relationships with the tanning industry
In the late 1990s, Rino Mastrotto called him for a famous advertisement depicting him dressed in leather and accompanied by the words “I make your leather without chromium“. In 2011, however, he made a provocative (and much-maligned) calendar for the Genuine Italian Vegetable-Tanned Leather Consortium of Ponte a Egola. The shots did not show the leather processes, but some models in their natural state portrayed at the height of the pubis. Toscani’s message – which stirred controversy and discussion at various levels – was clear: focus on the authenticity of naturalness.
Photo from Toscani Studio and Benetton’s IG profile
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