{"id":1728,"date":"2013-07-24T16:51:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T15:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=1728"},"modified":"2015-01-02T16:55:39","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T15:55:39","slug":"dazed-93-oliviero-toscani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=1728","title":{"rendered":"#Dazed 93: Oliviero Toscani"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Benetton\u2019s former master of controversy on his never-ending show<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
\"\u00a9olivierotoscani_BENTTON-004\"<\/div>\n
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\u201cI was born under the British bombs in 1942. My mother moved us out of Milan, up to the mountains, because our house was bombed when I was six months old. We lived in a peasant house having an incredible time, feeding ducks and chickens and cows and horses. After the war we had electricity coming into the village and I remember the first electric bulb switching on. (laughs) It sounds like\u00a0I\u2019m a primitive man! I moved back to Milan and of course I had an accent as a mountain boy, so everyone made fun of me in school. I had to put shoes on and get dressed to go to school. I didn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My father was a photographer for Corriere della Sera<\/em>. When I was six, I had my first little camera and would take the photos to my father\u2019s office. I could develop myself before the age of ten. I saw a lot of news as a child \u2013 I would run to see my father, and say, \u2018Can I come with you?\u2019 He took pictures of politicians, Hemingway, Toscanini, La Scala, beauty contests, things like that.<\/p>\n

I went to art school in Switzerland to study photography and graphic design. I had great teachers coming straight from Bauhaus<\/strong>. I used to go to London a lot, taking photos of rock\u2019n\u2019roll concerts. When I finished I started to take reportage pictures \u2013 one of my first stories was in \u201965 of a girl wearing a miniskirt.\u00a0Annabelle saw it and asked me to take fashion pictures for\u00a0the magazine. That\u2019s how I started my fashion career \u2013 after that Harper\u2019s Bazaar in America saw my photos and that was it. At 25 I was rich, almost. (laughs) It was like Blow-Up. I was working for the major magazines in the world already, French Elle, Italian and British Vogue, GQ<\/strong> and everyone else.\u00a0That was in the early 70s.\u00a0I created the concept for Jesus Jeans<\/strong> and worked on Ferucci<\/strong> and Esprit<\/strong>, then Benetton<\/strong>\u00a0in the 80s.\u00a0I started at Benetton<\/strong> in 1981\u00a0and I said, \u2018Listen Luciano Benetton, I don\u2019t want an advertising agency,\u00a0I don\u2019t want marketing studies. I will do my work and you will say \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no\u2019. If you want to do something new, you can\u2019t follow the rules.\u2019 And he accepted that.<\/p>\n

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“MANY YEARS AGO SOMEBODY TOLD ME, \u2018DON\u2019T TAKE MY PICTURE BECAUSE YOU\u2019LL STEAL MY SOUL.\u2019 THAT TOUCHED ME BECAUSE IF YOU LOOK AT SOME PORTRAITS, YOU CAN SEE THE SOUL”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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For World Aids<\/strong> day in 1993 I had a huge condom made and put it on the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Ronald Reagan said Aids was just for homosexuals, I thought that was stupid. All the young people were interested in Aids,\u00a0so I said, \u2018let\u2019s go find out what Aids is.\u2019 I did an issue of Colors magazine<\/strong> about Aids that was very well received. The American medical association said it was the best document about Aids\u00a0ever made.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the worst advertising photographer in the world. Other photographers are looking for consensus,\u00a0but I don\u2019t care. I do what I think I should. It\u2019s fantastic, I\u2019ve got a voice inside that tells me all the time. To be creative you have to be deeply insecure. Of what are we secure of? To die one day is the only thing, everything else is optional. (laughs) So I work in the option! I am not a creative person, but I\u2019m a situationist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\u00a9olivierotoscani_profilattico\"<\/figure>\n
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In 1993 I received a letter from a student of the University of Sarajevo saying, \u2018Mr Toscani, you should do something, because here there is a war and no one is talking about it.\u2019 I thought, how can\u00a0I show a war that we don\u2019t want to see? So I said, \u2018I\u2019m going to do an image of a dead soldier without a body.\u2019 I asked the Croatian Red Cross to get a military suit of a soldier, and that\u2019s what that photo is of. I became a hero for those university students.\u00a0There had been so much censorship with my pictures that I said, \u2018I\u2019m going to do a picture that no one can complain about.\u2019\u00a0So I went to the hospital and I took photos of a newborn baby and made\u00a0a campaign. I wasn\u2019t ready to handle it when that came out \u2013 there were people stopping in the street, swearing and screaming, especially in England. You know the British would like to see a newborn puppy on the wall but they don\u2019t\u00a0like children.<\/p>\n

It took me three years to get permission to go into death row to make the photographs for the Sentenced to Death campaign. Then the day the picture was published,\u00a0it had been agreed between me and Benetton that I would leave. I needed them to publish the campaign. It was one of my best works. In Europe we don\u2019t have capital punishment, it\u2019s such a primitive way to make justice. It\u2019s always intrigued me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\u00a9olivierotoscani_BENTTON-001\"<\/figure>\n
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I don\u2019t get angry. I understand that there are people who do not want to move from their point of view. When you start to discuss a problem society doesn\u2019t want to deal with it. I do my photography. They\u2019re not obliged to look at it.<\/p>\n

Every time you do something new it\u2019s controversial, right? Look, I\u2019m just a photographer,\u00a0I want to witness my time. I\u2019m not a fashion photographer, I\u2019m not an advertising photographer, I\u2019m not a still-life photographer. I photograph anything that interests me in the way I think is interesting; that\u2019s my philosophy. I\u2019m not interested in the aesthetic and beautiful. I think photography is the memory of humankind.\u00a0After Benetton, I photographed a village in Italy destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. Five hundred and sixty people\u00a0killed and there was no document of it.\u00a0I talked to the people that were still alive at the time.\u00a0They were children, three, five, six years old; now they\u2019re like, 80 or 90.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019M THE WORST ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHER IN THE WORLD. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE LOOKING FOR CONSENSUS, BUT I DON\u2019T CARE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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In doing fashion photography I realised these girls looked terrible, they started to get really sick. So I made a little movie about an anorexic girl and there was the opportunity for this brand to do a campaign. Then there was a big controversy about the fashion world and why the girls were so skinny.<\/p>\n

Everything\u2019s my personal work. Even the most commercial is personal work. Where there is fashion, there are politics, problems, ironies \u2013 there is everything that is going on. Every photo is socially political. I mean, a miniskirt is a sociopolitical statement.<\/p>\n

What I do now is called The Human Race. I go around the world, I take my pictures and\u00a0I talk to the people. I\u2019ve got up to 50,000 portraits now. I just went to Guatemala \u2013 the United Nations asked me to make this work there because there\u2019s an intolerance problem between minority tribes. \u00a0I go to Libya, Tokyo. I just shoot incredible faces. Many years ago somebody told me, \u2018Don\u2019t take my picture because you\u2019ll steal my soul.\u2019 That touched me because if you look at some portraits, you can see the soul. That\u2019s what\u00a0I\u2019m looking for. I don\u2019t care what they do. I look for people in moments where they are particularly alive.<\/p>\n

I call it a never-ending show. People ask me, \u2018Will you do an exhibition?\u2019 I don\u2019t care about that. I like pictures to be published. I like magazines, newspapers.\u00a0I\u2019ve got six children with three different women, I have 11 grandchildren. I\u2019ve been lucky. I live on a farm in Tuscany where my studio is. In front of me is the Mediterranean. I do my own olive oil, I do my own wine. I breed horses. I manage to do it all. I\u2019ve always got time. Every day,\u00a0I\u2019m always working.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Per visualizzare la gallery sul sito\u00a0 #DAZED<\/strong> clicca qui<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                              Benetton\u2019s former master of controversy on his never-ending show \u201cI was born under the British bombs in 1942. My mother moved us out of Milan,Leggi →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[791,28,31,3],"tags":[1175,15,23,44],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1728"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1736,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions\/1736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}