Oliviero Toscani is dead: Famous photos by the Italian photographer

To this day, his work for the fashion brand Benetton is among the most provocative in the history of photography; now the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani has died at the age of 82. His family announced this in a statement. In the summer, the photographer made it public in an interview that he was suffering from the incurable disease amyloidosis. This results in the formation of incorrectly folded proteins that settle on organs and attack them.

Between 1982 and 2000, Toscani was responsible for numerous advertising campaigns for the knitwear manufacturer Benetton. In view of Toscani’s controversial motifs, the clothing almost became a minor matter. Whether racism or religion, war, illness and death: Toscani knew no taboo.

“You can never go too far,” he once said. He didn’t see himself as an advertising photographer, but as an artist. “The whole advertising system is a system of idiots, made for idiots. They make empty promises and profit from human weakness, from the principle of seduction, from everything that is absurd. I was very generous with advertising. I have taught many advertisers to be less stupid,” Toscani told the .

In the spring of 2000, Toscani and Benetton ended their collaboration, but the photographer said even then: “Nothing is forever.” He has been working for the family business again since the end of 2017.

Toscani was born on February 28, 1942 in Milan. His father Fedele worked as a photographer for the Italian daily newspaper “Corriere della Sera” and introduced his son to the craft at an early age. In the early 1960s, Toscani studied photography in Zurich and then went to New York, where he met Andy Warhol, who became his role model.

Toscani caused a scandal with his first campaign for the Italian jeans manufacturer Jesus: In 1974, he photographed his then girlfriend’s bare bottom in tight hot pants and accompanied it with the Bible verse: “Whoever loves me, follow me.” Feminists and believers were outraged, but from then on Toscani was on everyone’s lips and more in demand as a photographer than ever.

He said: “In the long term, success has proven me right. I have nothing to blame myself for. Except that I could have gone even further with my actions.”