{"id":356,"date":"2012-06-04T08:32:56","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T07:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=356"},"modified":"2012-11-22T10:49:34","modified_gmt":"2012-11-22T09:49:34","slug":"oliviero-toscani-interview-val-gardena-south-tyrol-by-gunnar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"Oliviero Toscani Interview Val Gardena South Tyrol by Gunnar"},"content":{"rendered":"

L’intervista a Oliviero Toscani<\/a> del blogger Gunnar<\/a> su Styleclicker<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“This is the story\u2026
\nWhen I arrived at the set of the VIST<\/a> catalogue shoot in St. Ullrich, South Tyrol<\/a>, I introduced myself to photographer Oliviero Toscani<\/a>. I told him I was a blogger and was going to be there for two days to watch him work<\/a>. \u201cBloggers are lazy!\u201d was all he said. Well, I had known that provocation is a major domain of his. The next day, we sat down for the following interview\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/strong>(Vai all’intervista sul sito)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

What is a good photo?<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>A good photo is something that will stay as a document of something that happened to the humanity. You might immediately think of a war picture. No, I mean, a fashion picture, too, is a document of the human behaviour. I want to see what we are going through. So that for me is a good picture. It has nothing to do if it is technically well done. When the quality of an image stops at the aesthetics \u2013 colour, composition \u2013 it is always mediocre. Because the only task of art is the human condition. That kind of research.<\/p>\n

So your motivation of being a photographer is being a researcher of humanity?<\/strong>
\nLandscape, nature, animals\u2026 they are all perfect. The imperfection of humanity interests me a lot.<\/p>\n

How do you become a good photographer?<\/strong>
\nTo be a photographer today is not any more like it used to be twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Once, you had to know how to handle the camera, you had to know the technology. Today, that is not important. Today, to be a photographer is to be an imaginator. You have to use your imagination and imagine an image. Everybody can read and write, but how many authors are there? The same with photography: today, everybody can take a picture. But when a picture that doesn\u2019t serve anything turns to be an art picture \u2013 all those pictures hanging in exhibition halls, galleries \u2013 that makes me laugh. It\u2019s nonsense. They are ridiculous, they are the most stupid thing to do. Pictures that you take on a Sunday afternoon when you haven\u2019t got anything else to do. I don\u2019t believe in these art photographers. It is an insult to real photography.<\/p>\n

What is a real photographer? Someone you admire, alive or dead?<\/strong>
\nAugust Sander.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/strong>
\nBecause he handed over to society an incredible document of German life at that time. And not just German life, but the human condition at that time. For sure August Sander, Diane Arbus\u2026 there are a lot who have been very important.<\/p>\n

What is your recipe for success?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t have a recipe for success. Today the big problem is success. Everybody is working for success. Bullshit! You don\u2019t work for success. You have to work. And then somebody else will tell you if it is successful or not. Success is a consequence. Creativity, too, is a consequence. You know, a lot of young people they work for success. They lose themselves in the web, they lose themselves in a lot of gossipy, uncreative matters. Somehow, you have to be alone. You don\u2019t have to read and look and go and see what other people do. You should be like Kaspar Hauser if you want to be a good photographer. You have to develop your own primitive, instinctive view. If you look at what everybody else is doing, what is fashionable, you are lost. You have to listen to your voice.<\/p>\n

So it is a lot about inuition?<\/strong>
\nYes. You should be blind somehow to be able to be a photographer. You should be blind on one side and you should be very aware on the other side. You should see just your own way.<\/p>\n

How did digital photography change the way you are working?<\/strong>
\nYes, photography changed a lot. But it\u2019s not the technology. I can work with any camera. And photoshop and all that bullshit is a secondary problem. That\u2019s not the point. A lot of people get lost with that and they become lazy. Incredibly lazy! That\u2019s what I notice about young photographers: they don\u2019t really research for themselves. They do what the mainstream is doing because it\u2019s fashionable. They don\u2019t listen to their voice. They don\u2019t realize that they are unique.<\/p>\n

Do you have any favorite picture of the ones you took?<\/strong>
\nAll the work I did on Sant\u2019Anna di Stazzema, that village that had been destroyed by the Nazis in Second World War. That was a major work of mine. I went to photograph all the survivors. This has been a very deep work. The book is called \u201cThe Children Remember\u201d. Because when it happened, they were children. Now, they are old people. And they were telling me what they had seen that day. That is probably my best work, but very few people know it. So you see, to make something good you don\u2019t have to make things that everybody know. It has nothing to do with fame.<\/p>\n

What was the last book you read?<\/strong>
\nWell, I was reading the Steve Jobs biography because I knew the guy. It\u2019s well done. And the last real book I read was Emil Cioran, a Romanian writer, kind of a philosopher. I don\u2019t read novels. I read sociology, philosophy books most of the times.<\/p>\n

How many pairs of shoes do you own?<\/strong>
\nNot so many, I am not a shoe fanatic. Lots of shirts, though.<\/p>\n

Glasses?<\/strong>
\nI have my own, I produce them. So I\u2019ve got four or five pairs. I am a very bad shopper. I never go shopping. I never buy anything. I just go to the hardware store. I like screwdrivers, all those kind of tools.<\/p>\n

Are you a handyman?<\/strong>
\nYeah yeah. Fascinates me, all the machinery and that. I never walked into a bank all my life. I hate that, walking into a bank. Stupid people, the bankers. Lawyers and bankers, I hate them.<\/p>\n

And why do you hate bloggers?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t hate bloggers. I think, it is an incredible waste of time. Not for the bloggers because they are doing something. But the people who waste their time sitting in front of the screen believing that they learn something there. They don\u2019t learn anything. They deny the direct experience of things. I need a physical experience, three dimensional. And the blog, facebook, all this is\u2026 I say it very harshly: now we know where all the stupid are \u2013 in front of the monitor! Because anything that is easy is stupid!<\/p>\n

Thank you.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Vai all’intervista sul sito)<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

L’intervista a Oliviero Toscani del blogger Gunnar su Styleclicker: “This is the story\u2026 When I arrived at the set of the VIST catalogue shoot in St. Ullrich, South Tyrol, I introduced myself to photographer Oliviero Toscani. I told him ILeggi →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,3],"tags":[1175,23],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356"}],"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=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":697,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions\/697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}