Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.One day in Cuba in 1993, Fidel Castro told the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani that his greatest, unrealisable dream was to see Venice. Toscani offered to smuggle him past the border into Italy with a fake passport. The Cuban president could pose as a lookalike of himself, he added, with the pretext that Toscani needed a Castro double for a shoot in Venice. Castro hesitated, looked at his aides — then said: “Esto es el diablo”.A “terrorist of advertising”, reportedly in his own words, fashion photographer Oliviero Toscani has died aged 82. He achieved global renown thanks to explosive and controversial images spawned over a tumultuous, 18-year-long partnership with the Italian knitwear label Benetton. Since his 1971 Jesus Jeans advert — a bottom in skimpy shorts overlaid with a paraphrased biblical verse, “who loves me shall follow me” — his photos increasingly tackled sociopolitical issues and subverted the era’s deepest taboos, from Aids and war to the death penalty and racism, sending shockwaves internationally. Toscani’s digitally altered image of the Pope kissing an Egyptian Imam was retracted by Benetton after complaints from the Vatican state. His macro close-up of butt-cheeks stamped with the words “H.I.V. positive” was cited in court as exploitative by multiple Aids organisations. His graphic portrait of a newborn baby still attached to the umbilical cord and covered in fluids was censored in multiple countries. Although his critics accused him of “shockvertising”, Toscani held a life-long belief in the social responsibility of photography. “There’s no such thing as commercial, fashion, design or architecture photography,” he said in 2022 in the inaugural speech for his retrospective at Milan’s Palazzo Reale when he was 80. “I take photos because I am a witness of my time.”Born in Milan, in 1942, to a family with anti-fascist and anarchist leanings, Toscani followed in the steps of his father Fedele, a photoreporter for the Corriere della Sera newspaper famous for his image of Mussolini’s brutalised corpse in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, in 1945. Oliviero’s first published photo, on Corriere della Sera’s front page, was taken on assignment with Fedele in Predappio, in 1957, documenting Mussolini’s burial, whose death his father had captured.Toscani left home in the Sixties to study at Zurich’s Kunstgewerbeschule art school (now F+F), where his teachers included the experimental Dadaist artist Serge Stauffer and German expressionist painter Karl Schmid. His photos, characterised by crisp colours, plain backgrounds and a penchant for high-definition realism, blended photodocumentary and fashion shooting, but shunned mannerism. In 1970s New York, he documented the nightlife scene at the Limelight Club, photographing, among others, Keith Haring, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali, Naomi Campbell, Lou Reed, Vivienne Westwood, Franco Moschino, Cristina Rossi and Elio Fiorucci.“Toscani certainly recognised the power of images,” said Adam Broomberg, an artist and collaborator with Toscani. “He once said ‘people are more scandalised by images than they are about real life’.”According to Alessia Glaviano, global head of PhotoVogue, Toscani “bridged the gap between commerce and creativity. By infusing artistic depth into commercial photography, he elevated the medium” and “redefined how photography could engage with the world”.Toscani’s most high-profile images for Benetton include a Bosnian soldier’s T-shirt drenched in blood; a nun kissing a priest; a keffiyeh-ed Palestinian boy with his arm around an orthodox Jewish child in a hoiche hat; a human train of naked youths of different ethnicities, hugging, their skin tones in sharp contrast as they stare defiantly into the camera.“You would have come up with a brilliant idea to say goodbye,” Luciano Benetton, co-founder of the Benetton Group, said in a statement after the photographer’s death, “and honour the fellow traveller who sailed with you beyond the sea of common place.”During their partnership, Benetton fired Toscani twice. First, in 2000, when the state of Missouri filed a lawsuit against the group claiming that Toscani’s campaign showing portraits of inmates on death row gained access to the prison by misrepresenting the purpose of their visit. And finally in 2020, when the photographer said on television “Who cares if a bridge falls down?” about the 2018 Morandi bridge tragedy in which 43 people died.Toscani died in Cecina, Tuscany, where he lived and loved to produce oil and wine. “Who knows if Jesus Christ really walked on water?” he had told journalists in 2022. “Had cameras existed, I would have liked to have even just an Instamatic to see if it was true.” Perhaps el diablo was still in him.marianna.giusti@ft.com
