One day in Cuba during 1993, Fidel Castro informed the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani that his most significant, unattainable aspiration was to visit Venice. Toscani proposed to help him evade the border into Italy with a counterfeit passport. He suggested that the Cuban leader could impersonate a doppelgänger of himself, claiming Toscani required a Castro stand-in for a photo shoot in Venice. Castro paused, glanced at his advisors — then remarked: “Esto es el diablo”.
A “terrorist of advertising”, allegedly in his own words, fashion photographer Oliviero Toscani has passed away at the age of 82. He garnered international fame due to explosive and contentious visuals produced over a tumultuous, 18-year collaboration with the Italian knitwear brand Benetton. Starting with his 1971 Jesus Jeans advertisement — featuring a rear in revealing shorts overlaid with a paraphrased biblical quote, “who loves me shall follow me” — his imagery increasingly confronted sociopolitical subjects and challenged the deepest taboos of the time, covering topics from Aids and warfare to capital punishment and discrimination, provoking major reactions worldwide.
Toscani’s digitally modified depiction of the Pope embracing an Egyptian Imam was withdrawn by Benetton following objections from the Vatican. His macro close-up of buttocks marked with the phrase “H.I.V. positive” was deemed exploitative in court by several Aids organizations. His graphic representation of a newborn still connected to the umbilical cord and coated in fluids was subject to censorship in various nations.
Despite facing condemnation for “shockvertising”, Toscani maintained a lifelong conviction in the ethical obligations of photography. “There is nothing such as commercial, fashion, design or architecture photography,” he remarked in 2022 during his opening address for his retrospective at Milan’s Palazzo Reale at the age of 80. “I capture images because I serve as a witness to my era.”
Born in Milan in 1942 into a family with anti-fascist and anarchist sentiments, Toscani followed in the footsteps of his father Fedele, a photojournalist for the Corriere della Sera newspaper renowned for his photograph of Mussolini’s mutilated body in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, in 1945. Oliviero’s inaugural published photograph, featured on Corriere della Sera’s front page, was taken during an assignment with Fedele in Predappio in 1957, documenting Mussolini’s burial, an event his father had chronicled.
Toscani departed home in the 1960s to pursue studies at Zurich’s Kunstgewerbeschule art institution (now F+F), where his instructors included the avant-garde Dadaist artist Serge Stauffer and the German expressionist painter Karl Schmid. His photography, distinguished by sharp hues, minimal backgrounds, and a flair for high-definition realism, integrated photojournalism with fashion photography while avoiding mannerism.
In 1970s New York, he captured the nightlife atmosphere at the Limelight Club, photographing notable figures such as Keith Haring, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali, Naomi Campbell, Lou Reed, Vivienne Westwood, Franco Moschino, Cristina Rossi, and Elio Fiorucci.
“Toscani undoubtedly understood the influence of imagery,” stated Adam Broomberg, an artist and collaborator with Toscani. “He once claimed ‘people are more scandalized by images than they are about actual events’.”
As per Alessia Glaviano, global head of PhotoVogue, Toscani “bridged the divide between commerce and creativity. By enriching commercial photography with artistic profundity, he elevated the medium” and “transformed how photography could engage with the world.”
Some of Toscani’s most prominent images for Benetton include a Bosnian soldier’s shirt soaked in blood; a nun embracing a priest; a keffiyeh-clad Palestinian boy with his arm around an orthodox Jewish child in a hoiche hat; a human train of nude youths of varying ethnicities, embracing, their skin tones in stark contrast as they defiantly look into the lens.
“You would have conceived a brilliant way to bid farewell,” Luciano Benetton, co-founder of the Benetton Group, expressed in a statement following the photographer’s passing, “and honor the fellow traveler who journeyed with you beyond the sea of ordinary.”
Throughout their collaboration, Benetton dismissed Toscani twice. Initially, in 2000, when the state of Missouri lodged a lawsuit against the group, asserting that Toscani’s campaign displaying portraits of inmates on death row was granted access to the correctional facility by misrepresenting the intent of their visit. Finally, in 2020, after the photographer remarked on television “Who cares if a bridge collapses?” regarding the 2018 Morandi bridge disaster that resulted in 43 fatalities.
Toscani passed away in Cecina, Tuscany, where he resided and relished producing olive oil and wine. “Who knows if Jesus Christ genuinely walked on water?” he had conveyed to reporters in 2022. “If cameras had existed, I would have loved to have even an Instamatic to see if it was true.” Perhaps el diablo still lingered within him.
marianna.giusti@ft.com