Utopian, transgressive, unconscious, brilliant. Oliviero Toscani is all of this.
But perhaps what makes this photographer an artist is the intellectual freedom with which he has always carried out his work, a characteristic that has caused him many problems during his career.
Oliviero Toscani and his advertising campaigns
Toscani has often been criticized for his shocking advertising campaigns. Like when in 2000 he photographed death row inmates in Missouri for the Benetton brand. In that case, the matter ended up before a federal court, with big economic troubles for the Treviso-based company which interrupted the working relationship with the photographer. But there is no malice in Toscani's work. He has always used big brand advertising as a stage to talk about human rights. In this regard, the shots with models from different countries come to mind, united by a fashion brand to condemn racism. In short, advertising for Toscani seems to be a means of shouting out much larger concepts. Like it or not, the system works.
The goal of the machine as a filter of reality
Oliviero Toscani said he was "terrified of disease" and perhaps this is one of the reasons that prompted him in 2007 to create a campaign against anorexia. In the shots, Isabelle Caro, a model suffering from anorexia, is portrayed without veils. The photos reveal the dramatic consequences of this disease on the body. The images are shocking, raw, merciless. In this case too, reality is filtered through the lens of the machine, perhaps the only way to see suffering in a detached way.
But Toscani is also an incurable optimist, a man endowed with a contagious and surprising vitality. In an interview with La Repubblica he said: “I never look in the rearview mirror. Things that go away are far away. (...) ". Always oriented towards the future, Oliviero Toscani will surely surprise us very soon with another of his magic.
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