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A Look Back At Oliviero Toscani’s Most Provocative Benetton Campaigns
Italian photographer and art director Oliviero Toscani has died aged 82, his family has confirmed in a statement. “It is with great sorrow that we announce the news that today, 13 January 2025, our beloved Oliviero has embarked on his next journey,” his wife Kirsti Toscani posted on Instagram. The news comes after the photographer revealed last year that he was suffering from amyloidosis, a rare disease that causes abnormal proteins to build up in organs and tissues.
Toscani was best known for his lengthy relationship with Italian fashion brand Benetton, where he served as art director for more than 20 years, across two stints. “In order to explain certain things, words simply don’t suffice. You taught us that,” the brand posted on Instagram, along with a campaign by Toscani featuring a bouquet of flowers. “And with that said, we’d like to pay tribute to you with a photo that you took for us many years ago, in 1989. Farewell Oliviero. Keep on dreaming.”
The photographer joined the brand back in 1982, when he quickly became known for his provocative campaigns, from a photograph of AIDS victim David Kirby to an image of an interracial lesbian couple with their adopted baby, which was notable at the time. In April 2000, though, Toscani was fired over his campaign about the death penalty, entitled “Looking Death in the Face”, which saw murder victims’ families lobbying retailers and consumers to boycott the brand. He rejoined the brand in 2017, only for him to be dropped by Benetton again three years later, following his dismissive comments about the Genoa bridge disaster.
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Below, take a look back at Oliviero Toscani’s most controversial ad campaigns for United Colors of Benetton over the years.
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“Condoms”, spring/summer 1991
The coloured condoms campaign was a nod to the AIDS crisis which was ravaging the younger generations in the late ’80s and early ’90s. In November 1997, Benetton began selling “a complete range of coloured, reliable and up-to-the-minute condoms” in the UK, manufactured and sold under license by Ansell, an Australian company and sold at Boots and in Benetton stores. “I have found out that advertising is the richest and most powerful medium existing today,” Toscani told the New York Times at the time, “so I feel responsible to do more than to say, ‘Our sweater is pretty.’”
Another of Benetton’s ads, which showed a priest and a nun in clerical vestments, kissing. This sparked outrage from the Roman Catholic Church. Toscani had previously upset the Church for his 1972 Jesus Jeans ad, for a sexually-charged image and name that it deemed blasphemous. But as he told the Times, the message was intended to reach a younger, core Benetton customer. In Spain, he said, “which is alive with young people, they see the priest-and-nun ad and smile about that. In Italy, where there are still old journalists, old institutions, they are upset.”
“Newborn baby”, autumn/winter 1991
This image of a newborn baby, “Giusy”, still attached to the umbilical cord, was intended, according to Benetton, to represent an “anthem to life”, but it was not met with such praise by consumers. This is said to be the company’s most censored image.
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“Blanket”, autumn/winter 1990
This image depicts an interracial lesbian couple with their adopted child at a time when advertising was almost devoid of such depictions.
“HIV Positive”, autumn/winter 1993
Various AIDS groups sued Benetton over their “commercial exploitation of suffering”.
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Toscani used his advertising to address racism on numerous occasions. These hearts were later revealed to be pigs’ hearts.
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SWOW SWAG
