>OLIVIERO TOSCANI FOR BENETTON

Toscani, Oliviero (b. 1942), Italian photographer and art director, trained at the Dada- and Bauhaus-influenced Zurich Design School, and friendly with contemporary culture heroes like Andy Warhol and Federico Fellini. He entered advertising in 1973 with a provocative campaign for Jesus Jeans, but achieved fame and notoriety during a long association (1984-2000) with the Italian clothing firm Benetton. Abandoning the bland pseudo-realism of conventional advertising photography, he used his own and others’ photographs to flout taboos associated with race, war, sex, religion, death, and bodily functions (vide his book Cacas, 1998). He chose Thérèse Frare’s pietà-like image of a young American, David Kirby, dying of AIDS for Benetton’s 1992 campaign. His increasingly strained relationship with Benetton was finally ended by images of Missouri death-row prisoners that allegedly cost the company a major contract with Sears. Toscani, who has described himself as a ‘total anarchist’, has been vilified and acclaimed in roughly equal measure, and his motivation variously attributed to moral fervour, exhibitionism, or cynical calculation. But his iconoclastic approach has probably been effective in reaching youthful, affluent consumers in an increasingly global market place.