Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, famed for provocative Benetton campaigns, dies at 82

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MILAN (AP) — Oliviero Toscani, the photographer behind Benetton’s provocative ad campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s who later broke with the Italian knitwear brand amid controversy, died Monday at age 82.

Toscani disclosed last year he had a rare disease. “It is with immense pain that we announce that our beloved Oliviero has undertaken his next journey,″ his wife, Kirsti, and their three children said in a statement. He died at a hospital in Livorno, Tuscany, the news agency ANSA reported.

Toscani had amyloidosis, a disease characterized by a buildup of abnormal protein deposits in the body. He told Corriere della Sera in August he lost had 40 kilograms (nearly 90 pounds) in a year, adding, “I don’t know how long I have left to live, but I’m not interested in living like this anyway.”

Toscani also said he would like to be remembered “not for any one photo but for my whole work, for the commitment.”

Toscani was the creative force behind shock ad campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s that featured images such as the pope kissing an imam on the lips, which angered the Vatican.

Other images promoting the United Colors of Benetton depicted a priest embracing a nun, a newborn baby with its umbilical cord and a black woman breastfeeding a white baby, part of the brand’s advocacy for diversity, religious tolerance and environmental messages.

During a 1997 shoot of a Benetton campaign featuring Jews and Arabs living peacefully together in Israel, Toscani told The Associated Press, “Any picture is a political image, so we make our choice and we go for the real thing.”

He added: “You might have to face criticism. A lot of people don’t like things that are different. Everybody likes to conform. We don’t conform.”

His decadeslong relationship with Benetton was severed in 2020 after Toscani outraged relatives of victims of the deadly 2018 Genoa bridge collapse, telling RAI television, “Who cares about a bridge collapse?” He was responding to an outcry over a photograph of founding members of a political protest movement alongside key members of the Benetton family, which controlled the company that maintained the bridge.

Toscani apologized in an interview with La Repubblica, saying: “I am sorry. More: I am ashamed to apologize. I am humanly destroyed and deeply pained.” But the damage was done, and Benetton ended a relationship that had flourished from 1982-2000 and been rekindled in 2018.

Benetton remembered Toscani in a social media post: “Farewell, Oliviero. Keep on dreaming,’’ beneath Toscani’s 1989 photo of a hand offering a bouquet of flowers.

Toscani was born in Milan on Feb. 28, 1942, the son of a photojournalist for Corriere della Sera. He studied photography and graphics at the University of the Arts in Zurich from 1961-65, and worked with the newly founded Vogue Italia and other major fashion publications.

Over the years, he shot campaigns for such brands as Chanel, Robe di Kappa, Fiorucci and Esprit. But he was probably best known for his work for the United Colors of Benetton, with images that carried messages promoting equality and diversity while denouncing anorexia, homophobia, the death penalty and racism.

His work for United Colors of Benetton, a brand then known most for its colorful knitwear, raised its global profile. In the early 1990s, he conceived and directed “Colors,” a global publication distributed in Benetton stores, and created along with Luciano Benetton the research center Fabrica in Benetton’s home city of Treviso that supported and launched many fashion industry careers.

Toscani tackled the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s with a colored condom campaign, during which Benetton sold a range of colored condoms, and with a portrait of AIDS activist David Kirby surrounded by family as he was dying.

In 2007, Toscani’s “No Anorexia” campaign for the Italian fashion brand Nolita sparked fresh discussions about the illness and its relationship to the fashion industry. Toscani’s photograph with skeletally thin model Isabelle Caro was revealed on giant billboards and in newspaper ads during Milan Fashion Week and received worldwide attention.

He was also involved in projects addressing problems such as road safety, violence against women and stray dogs.

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Zampano reported from Rome.