Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, famed for provocative 1990s Benetton campaigns, dies at 82

Toscani said he would like to be remembered “not for any one photo but for my whole work, for the commitment”. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Oliviero Toscani, the photographer behind Benetton’s provocative ad campaigns of the 1990s who later broke with the Italian knitwear brand under controversy, died Monday (January 13, 2025) at age 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 Ms. Kirsti and their three children said in a statement Monday (January 13, 2025).

Toscani suffered from amyloidosis, a disease characterised by a buildup of abnormal protein deposits in the body. He told Corriere della Sera last August that he lost had 40 kg (nearly 90 pounds) 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 breast feeding 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 a public flap 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.