Farewell to a Visionary: Remembering Oliviero Toscani, Iconic Italian Photographer at 82

Italian photographer and artistic director Oliviero Toscani, known for stirring up controversy with his daring campaigns for the fashion label Benetton during the 1980s and 90s, has passed away at the age of 82, as announced by his family on Monday.

The photographer disclosed over the summer that he was fighting a rare illness called amyloidosis, where a protein known as amyloid accumulates in essential organs.

Originally from Milan and born in 1942, Toscani was the progeny of renowned Corriere della Sera photojournalist Fedele Toscani.

After pursuing studies in photography and graphic design at Zurich University of the Arts in the late 1960s, Toscani began to forge a path as a fashion photographer for publications like Elle, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Toscani gained worldwide recognition in the early 1980s when Luciano Benetton appointed him as art director at his family-run apparel company.

Instead of prominently displaying Benetton’s iconic vividly-colored knitwear, Toscani’s marketing strategies focused on contemporary social issues, addressing topics like the HIV/AIDS crisis, racial discrimination, and capital punishment.

One of these campaigns in 1992 featured a photograph of David Kirby, a victim of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as he took his last breaths surrounded by loved ones in a hospice in Columbus, Ohio.

The image, captured by then journalism student Therese Frare and first published in Life magazine in 1990, incited outrage among Roman Catholics for allegedly ridiculing religious imagery, and stirred discontent among AIDS advocates who deemed the photo inappropriate and exploitative.

Kirby’s relatives stated they had permitted the use of the image to promote awareness about AIDS and as a final tribute to their deceased son.

“I wasn’t primarily concerned with the company’s sweaters,” Toscani expressed in an interview with The United Nations of Photography website in 2012.

“Quite the opposite, I feel it is crucial for a business to exhibit its social awareness and responsiveness to society… the outcomes indicated that this approach was successful. Throughout the 18 years I collaborated with Luciano Benetton, the company expanded twenty-fold,”

Other campaigns by Benetton under Toscani’s stewardship encompassed the 2000 focus on capital punishment, which showcased portraits of death row inmates in the U.S., taken by Toscani over a two-year timeframe in the late 1990s.

Toscani’s partnership with Benetton also led to the establishment in the early 1990s of the magazine Colors, in collaboration with U.S. graphic designer Tibor Kalman, which documented the emergence of a progressively multicultural society.

Additional projects with Luciano Benetton encompassed the research institute Fabrica located in the northern city of Treviso. This entity briefly ventured into filmmaking in the 2000s, under Marco Muller’s direction, but currently primarily operates as a residency aimed at cultivating interaction among budding creatives.

After parting ways with Benetton in 2000, Toscani continued to advocate for causes close to his heart, such as LGBTQ+ rights, racism, and anorexia through his work for various brands.

His legacy endures through his wife Kirsti Toscani (née Moseng) and their three children, Rocco, Lola, and Ali Toscani.