{"id":4436,"date":"2015-11-18T12:58:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T11:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=4436"},"modified":"2015-11-18T15:18:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T14:18:56","slug":"the-photographer-behind-some-of-fashions-most-controversial-images-speaks-vogue-com-16-11-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=4436","title":{"rendered":"The Photographer Behind Some of Fashion\u2019s Most Controversial Images Speaks (vogue.com \/16.11.2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Even if you don\u2019t know his name, you know Oliviero Toscani\u2019s work. Perhaps it\u2019s moved you to tears or caused you to withdraw in horror. He\u2019s the mind behind all manner of controversial images, most famously the campaigns he helmed during his two decades as art director for United Colors of Benetton. Consider a handful: three fresh-looking hearts laid out against a clean white background, labeled simply \u201cWhite,\u201d \u201cBlack,\u201d and \u201cYellow\u201d; a nun kissing a priest; or most famously, the final moments of AIDS patient David Kirby, surrounded by his family, as captured by Therese Frare. It\u2019s a photo that\u2019s at once surreal and visceral, often likened to a piet\u00e0 for the 21st century.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Toscani is a provocateur, though he would deny it. His work has often come under fire for parlaying tragedy into shock value into dollar signs for brands like Benetton, while he sees himself as simply a mirror for the ills of the world, amplifying them in ways that make them universally heard.<\/p>\n

Love it or hate it, there\u2019s no denying the singular impact of Toscani\u2019s work, which is the subject of a new tome, More Than Fifty Years of Magnificent Failures<\/em>. We spoke with the lensman about timelessness, the influence of his father, and fashion\u2019s unwillingness to deal with the difficult.<\/p>\n

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Could you speak about the title of the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[Since] the beginning I thought I would call it Magnificent Failures<\/em> because looking back you realize that everything could have been done better, but I\u2019ve been very lucky. I did work for all the magazines in the world, the United States, Italy, France, everywhere, and I\u2019m still doing it. I feel like one of those rockers! Bob Dylan is still singing, and he\u2019s got my age; we\u2019ll be going until we die, I think! So, it is a magnificent failure. Christopher Columbus wanted to discover India and he discovered America, so it is a magnificent failure. Look at the face of Che Guevara\u2014magnificent failure. Magnificent failures are much better than an okay success.<\/p>\n

Did you ever intend to shock with your images?<\/strong>
\nI didn\u2019t shock with the images, I got shocked by what was surrounding me. Images are just documentation of facts that are surrounding us. We know most of what we know because we look at pictures. Now today it\u2019s just enough to look at the picture and not have any responsibility to what is happening around us: \u201cI\u2019m going to look at a picture and that\u2019s it. The problem is solved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is it difficult for you to shift between graver subject matter\u2014whether that\u2019s AIDS or anorexia\u2014and more traditional fashion images, or is it all on the same spectrum?<\/strong>
\nNot really, no. All those facts are surrounding us at the same time. One day you go and photograph some fashion in New York, and then the next day you go to Somalia to do reportage for a magazine. I\u2019m simply a witness of my time. I haven\u2019t got the head of a fashion photographer. It would be an insult if somebody told me, \u201cYou are a fashion photographer\u201d or \u201cYou are an advertising photographer.\u201d I am just a reporter. What is surrounding me, I try to photograph or set it up. I don\u2019t just look, but I try to see.<\/p>\n

Has your creative process changed at all over the years?<\/strong>
\nI never really analyzed my creative process. I never look for ideas\u2014people who look for ideas don\u2019t have any ideas! My father used to be a news photographer. He was the Italian Weegee, and I learned from that to be a situationist. I\u2019m influenced by what is happening around me. I look at the situation, and from the situation I try to [find] what I think is the best way to document what is surrounding me. I have to set up\u2014to make it bigger, more colorful, stronger.<\/p>\n

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With your work for United Colors of Benetton, did you have complete creative freedom in the campaigns you created?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I was working directly with Luciano Benetton. I never really worked with advertising agencies or things like that. I\u2019m not executing other people\u2019s ideas. What I photograph is out of my vision. With Luciano, it was a very good relationship. We trusted each other. I knew he was a very good entrepreneur, and he thought I was a good communication man.<\/p>\n

Do you think that the fashion industry has become more or less willing to look at difficult things?<\/strong>
\nThe fashion world is a kind of ostrich. I remember when first I did work around AIDS, fashion people were very much [surrounded] by AIDS, but nobody wanted to talk about that.<\/p>\n

Did looking back at so much of your work in one place lead you to feel differently about any of it?<\/strong>
\nNot really. Every work has got its time. For example, in the book there is a story about a collection, I think I did it for Vogue<\/em> in \u201966, haute couture. I did it on a white background, posed in the street, and a young art director said, \u201cOh, Mr. Toscani, I saw a story you did in the \u201960s in Rome\u2014can you do it again?\u201d For me, it was very funny, to go back 50 years later and to do the same location, [with] the girls of today. It\u2019s great to have the opportunity. But of course, Bob Dylan doesn\u2019t sing [\u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind\u201d] today the same way he did 50 years ago. And he drives everybody crazy\u2014everybody would like to hear him sing it the same way, he says, \u201cNah!\u201d I heard him sing it as a waltz, like an Austrian yodel!<\/p>\n

Do you have favorite images? Do you get attached to photos, or do you just make them and move on?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019m not a nostalgic person at all. I really love the time I\u2019m living in. Now I\u2019m 73, [and] it\u2019s a great time. When I was 20, it was a great time, 30, great time, and I\u2019m not embarrassed to say that I\u2019m a very privileged and lucky person. Probably the [most] I have ever met in my life! And as a fashion photographer, when I started, the models used to be those big models\u2014Capucine, those women. We were the first generation that photographed girls with their legs spread sitting in a chair, looking at you. I\u2019m very pleased that I belonged to that.<\/p>\n

What else of your father\u2019s work has informed yours?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s an attitude. I\u2019m not a photographer because I love photography. For me, photography is like a pen for a writer. It\u2019s just a medium that I use. People do jogging; I don\u2019t do jogging\u2014I run if I have to go somewhere! I don\u2019t run for the sake of running, I don\u2019t care. I\u2019ve got a very simple relationship to photography as a medium. I can use any camera, it\u2019s no problem. We went from film to digital, no problem. I haven\u2019t got the limitation of the art, but what I photograph is important, and of course the way I photograph it is an added value. But to me, it is the story\u2014what there is inside a picture.<\/p>\n

PDF of this article (38 KB)<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

16.11.2015<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0vogue.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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