Oliviero Toscani, the iconic Italian photographer, died on Monday morning. He was 82. Known as the creative force behind some of the world’s most successful brands, Toscani produced some of the most iconic advertising campaigns from the 1980s to the 2000s.
His death was announced by his family in a brief press release. Hospitalized on January 10th at the Cecina hospital in Tuscany, the photographer had been suffering from amyloidosis for two years. The disease is a rare condition characterized by the buildup of abnormal protein deposits in various tissues of the body, damaging organs.
Born in Milan in 1942, Toscani published his first photo at the age of 14 in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. His father, Fedele Toscani, was one of the newspaper’s first photojournalists. The image was a portrait of Rachele Mussolini, Benito Mussolini’s wife, shoot during the dictator’s burial in Predappio, near Bologna.
Toscani started his career in advertising, which he always claimed to prefer over certain films. For the Italian ice cream brand Cornetto Algida, he chose an image of three girls riding a tandem while enjoying an ice cream.
But his real success came in 1982, when he started his lifelong collaboration with the Italian clothing brand United Colors of Benetton. Until then, advertisements were primarily focused on the products, but with Toscani, the advertisements became a way to discuss and highlight social issues.
His photographs, shot with a white background because it was “his obsession,” tackled themes such as racial equality, homophobia, AIDS, mafia, and the abolition of the death penalty. “My weapon is photography,” he told Repubblica a few years ago, “and not by chance, in English, it’s called ‘to shoot,’ which also means to fire.”
In 1991, using a photo of a nun kissing a priest to advertise a sweater seemed like an heresy to many, but young people viewed it with curiosity because the image represented the transition to a new phase of emancipation.
For over 20 years, Toscani’s life was intertwined with Benetton, but their relationship was marked by numerous controversies and interruptions. The first came in 2000 when the photographer paired the company’s green logo with a series of portraits of death row inmates in the United States. The state of Missouri accused the artist of having deceived the inmates by not clarifying to them the commercial purpose of the photos.
Toscani defended himself by explaining that it was not mere advertising but a way to express his opposition to the death penalty. Despite apologies and the end of their collaboration, the brand was forced to close about 400 stores.
But Oliviero Toscani was much more than just the photographer for the Treviso-based brand. He was an irreverent, polemical, and direct artist. His images were not meant to please but to “provoke discussion” because he believed that “the search for consensus creates mediocrity.”
“In 1973, the provocative shot for Jesus jeans drew criticism even from the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. Toscani recounted: ‘We were broke. There were no money for the campaign. When I came back in Milan, I started experimenting with some shots and noticed everyone’s eyes on the streets were glued to Donna Jordan’s backside.’ Her face was famous, but not her back. ‘So I put her booty on a pedestal, with the cheeky slogan “Whoever loves me, follow me”. And those weren’t even the right jeans! They were Levi’s.’ “
In these 80 years, Toscani had many experiences, “of all colors,” because what characterized his photography was his civil engagement. Toscani’s bet was always the same: to be immortal. Because, as he wrote in his book “Non sono obiettivo” (I am not objective), “getting old is nothing more than the punishment for still being alive.”