Oliviero Toscani | Benetton recovers the 90’s controversy

Autor: Alegría Olmeda (@alegriaolmeda) | Oliviero Toscani, the photographer who revolutionized Benetton with the most controversial advertising campaigns remembered, has come back behind the objective of the infinite colors brand, calling for social integration.

1992. Our wardrobes (yes, yours too) were flooded with Benetton garments that conquered us for their basic dyed in vivid colors of mineral pigments. All right, until suddenly, an advertising campaign bearing her name showed a nun and a priest kissing. The controversy was served.

Behind that objective was Oliviero Toscani, who from that moment onwards would become the person who would revolutionize the concept of advertising, and that we will always remember for the critical and exquisite hardness generated by his work. Toscani is one of those who is clear about the things he can’t stand, likes the scandal, and in some of his interviews, he says that “the important thing is not what you do but how you do it“. Bravo.

Oliviero Toscani is one of those who has it all so extremely clear that he is able to slap the world in the form of advertising criticism by making exquisite hives in the skin of more than one (and two).

From 1982 to 2000, Toscani worked hand-in-hand with Benetton, with whom he launched his most iconic advertising campaigns, which still leave people speechless today. In them, he showed us terminally ill AIDS patients, couples from different ethnic groups, members of religious clergy of all sexual orientations, the foreground of the empty gaze of those sentenced to death… He did not leave aside any subject that did not provoke committed comments and stirring social debates. That is why Oliviero Toscani submitted to demands and threats of censorship constantly.

It is now, 17 after their latest collaboration and coinciding with the full restructuring process of the retail brand, that Toscani and Benetton have once again worked together on a campaign with social integration as the main theme.

This time, Oliviero Toscani (@olivierotoscanistudio) puts the problem of integration in the spotlight of today’s society. To illustrate this, he has photographed the children of a multiracial school in Milan with 28 schoolchildren from 13 different countries and 4 continents studying together and forming the society of the future. Isn’t it far more ridiculous (if at all) to think about racism once this has been raised?

In another photo, a group of children are reading Pinocchio with the teacher. It is not a random book, but a metaphor: Pinocchio in italian means fake news.

Let social networks burn 😉