Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, famed for Benetton adverts, dies aged 82

Oliviero Toscani, the photographer behind Benetton’s provocative ad campaigns of the 1990s who later broke with the Italian knitwear brand under controversy, has died aged 82.

Toscani disclosed last year that he was suffering from a rare disease and did not know how long he had to live.

“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 on Monday.

He told Corriere della Sera last August that he lost had 40 kilograms 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 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 1990s that featured images such as the pope kissing an imam on the lips, which angered the Vatican.

Others promoting the United Colours 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.

His decades-long relationship with Benetton was severed after Toscani outraged relatives of victims in the deadly 2018 Genoa bridge collapse, telling RAI television: “Who cares about a bridge collapse?”

He was responding to public concern 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 apologised in an interview with La Repubblica, saying: “I am sorry. More: I am ashamed to apologise. I am humanly destroyed and deeply pained.”

But the damage was done, and Benetton completely cut ties with him.

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

Toscani was born in Milan on February 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 Colours of Benetton, a brand then known most for its colourful knitwear, raised its global profile.

In the early 1990s, he conceived and directed Colours, a global publication distributed in Benetton stores, and created with Luciano Benetton the research centre Fabrica in Benetton’s home city of Treviso which supported and launched many fashion industry careers.

Toscani tackled the Aids crisis in the early 1990s with a coloured condom campaign, during which Benetton sold a range of coloured 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 with the fashion industry.

Toscani’s photograph of skeletally thin model Isabelle Caro was revealed on giant advertising hoardings 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.