Reuters
—
Oliviero Toscani, the person behind the shock promoting campaigns that helped make Italy’s Benetton one of many world’s largest clothes manufacturers, died on Monday on the age of 82, his household stated in a press release.
Toscani was admitted to hospital on Friday in Cecina, close to his Tuscan nation residence, in a really severe situation. A supply with information of the matter stated on Saturday he had misplaced consciousness.
“It is with great sorrow that we announce the news that today, 13 January 2025, our beloved Oliviero has embarked on his next journey,” Toscani’s spouse Kirsti and three youngsters stated within the assertion.
The photographer had revealed in an interview in August with the Corriere della Sera newspaper that he was affected by amyloidosis, a uncommon and incurable situation that results in the construct up of amyloid proteins that have an effect on the physique’s important organs.
Toscani stated he had misplaced 40 kilograms (88 kilos) in weight in a single 12 months and the newspaper revealed an image of him trying sickly and emaciated.
Toscani, who was born on Feb. 28, 1942, adopted in his father’s footsteps by coaching as a photographer, learning in Zurich and dealing for a lot of trend magazines the place he helped set up the careers of fashions together with Monica Bellucci.
NCS’s 2017 interview with world-renowned Italian photographer, Oliviero Toscani
However he got here to prominence within the Eighties as artistic director for Benetton, the family-owned trend chain based mostly in northern Italy.
Toscani put photographs of a dying AIDS affected person and the blood-drenched garments of a soldier killed in Bosnia on to billboards around the globe, stoking controversies that helped to popularize the “United Colors of Benetton” brand.
The photographer left Benetton in 2000 after a furore over a marketing campaign that includes photographs of US prisoners on demise row.
Toscani and American freelance journalist Ken Shulman interviewed and photographed 26 prisoners awaiting execution in US jails in a marketing campaign which learn like a passionate manifesto towards capital punishment.
“I exploit clothing to raise social issues,” Toscani instructed Reuters in an interview on the time because the controversy raged over whether or not the marketing campaign was a step too far.
“Traditional advertising says if you buy a certain product you will be beautiful, sexually powerful, successful. All that bullshit doesn’t really exist,” he stated.
He resumed working for the group in 2017, reestablishing his partnership with Luciano Benetton, one of many firm founders, who had returned to attempt to revive a model that had been overtaken by nimbler gamers within the quick trend sector.
However, the Benetton group reduce ties with him in 2020 after feedback that performed down the importance of the 2018 Morandi Bridge disaster which killed 43 folks.
The bridge in Genoa was operated on the time by a unit of the Benetton family-controlled infrastructure group Atlantia.
His work was showcased in an exhibition in Zurich’s Museum fur Gestaltung in 2024 entitled “Photography and Provocation.”