“The problem is not to be number one. The problem is to be unique.”
In memoriam: Oliviero Toscani (1942–2025) was an Italian photographer and art director whose provocative Benetton campaigns changed what advertising could say, and London Real remembers him with respect.
In short: Oliviero Toscani was the Milan-born photographer who, as Benetton’s creative force from 1982 to 2000, put racism, AIDS, war and the death penalty on billboards around the world. In this conversation, recorded in London in 2018 shortly after he returned to Benetton, he told Brian Rose about art school in 1960s London, discovering California, why he refused to work with advertising agencies, the three years it took to photograph prisoners on death row, his anti-anorexia campaign, and why he believed insecurity, difference and a refusal to seek consensus were the roots of real creativity.
Key takeaways
- Be unique, not number one. Toscani said that chasing the top spot is expensive and often makes you the best of a mediocre field, while being unique is what makes work interesting.
- Insecurity is part of creativity. He believed a real creative person acts in total insecurity, and that the moment of greatest doubt is often the moment of greatest creativity.
- Provoke interest, not shock. He rejected the idea that he set out to shock. His aim was to provoke thought, and he argued that people are shocked mainly when they refuse to change their point of view.
- Give people what they need. Like a good doctor or teacher, he said, an artist should give the public what it needs rather than what it asks for, and great art will always provoke discussion.
- Choose an intelligent commissioner. He told Brian that the quality of an artist’s work depends on the intelligence of the person commissioning it, and that the artist’s duty is to enrich that commissioner culturally as well as financially.
- The still image asks for responsibility. Toscani argued that a photograph is looked at in silence, which forces viewers to decide where they stand, unlike film or television that tells them how to feel.
- Difference is humanity’s richness. From Le Corbusier’s lesson that no two clouds are alike, he drew the conviction that difference, migration and integration are opportunities, not threats.
From Milan to swinging London and California
Oliviero Toscani was born in Milan in 1942, the son of Fedele Toscani, a news photographer for the Corriere della Sera. Speaking in 2018, he told Brian Rose that he had been a poor student who spent more time at the cinema than at school, and that as a young man he hitchhiked to England, learning English in Brighton around 1960 at the time of the mods and rockers.
He studied in Zurich and spent time as a guest student at the Royal College in London in 1962. He remembered London then as foggy, poor and still recovering from the war, insisting that swinging London was really a thousand art students having fun. In 1964 he won a Pan Am photography competition linked to the New York World’s Fair and went on to California, where he found an energy of individuals coming together to make bigger waves.
That instinct to be on the cutting edge stayed with him. He told Brian that somewhere in the world someone is always dreaming of the future, and that his work was to go and find it. Humanity, he said, was the subject, the object and the task of all art.
What creativity really meant to him
Asked what he would tell an 18-year-old about creativity, Toscani was blunt. Only foolish people call themselves creative, he said, and anyone who goes looking for an idea has already admitted they do not have one. A real creative person simply does, in total insecurity, what they feel they must do, and lets others judge it afterwards.
He saw political correctness and the search for consensus as enemies of art. Provocation, he argued, has been given a negative meaning, but art should provoke peace, laughter, understanding and a better life. Schools teach people to seek agreement, he said, and the search for consensus produces mediocrity.
He illustrated this with his long-running Human Race project, for which he had photographed around 75,000 people against a white background in streets and squares around the world. Nobody, he said, was ugly, and when ordinary people looked into his lens they looked like angels, in contrast to many fashion models, whom he found empty.
Why photography, and why advertising
Toscani described himself as a witness of his time who happened to use photography. A serious photographer today, he said, has to be author, set designer, director, director of photography, camera operator and producer at once, and he recalled spending a year looking for one child with an angel’s face and a devil’s eyes.
He believed the still image was the most powerful medium because it is looked at in silence. Unlike film, which tells you how to feel, a photograph obliges you to decide where you stand. He noted that most of what people know about the world, and about public figures such as Donald Trump, comes from images interpreted by someone else.
Advertising, he argued, was where an artist could reach the public, since traditional art had become the private property of collectors. He compared the relationship between artist and commissioner to the great patrons of history, from Lorenzo the Magnificent to the patrons of Caravaggio and Leonardo, and said that big artists had always been, in a sense, mercenaries.
The Benetton years
Toscani explained that Luciano Benetton approached him after his work with Esprit in California and Fiorucci in Italy. His condition was simple: no advertising agencies and no market research, just the two of them. He told Brian they listened to the marketing department and then did the opposite, because the goal was to be unique rather than number one.
From the multiracial images and the black, white and yellow hearts to his decision to put AIDS on the face of the brand at a time when it was taboo, he said he was simply reporting the world as he found it, calling himself a situationist. He also founded Colors magazine. When he left in 2000, he said, critics had predicted he would destroy the brand, yet Benetton was among the best-known labels in the world.
Some of these images were also criticised, including the photograph of a man dying of AIDS, which critics said exploited suffering. He returned to Benetton in 2018 at Luciano Benetton’s invitation, which is the context for this conversation. That second period ended in 2020, when Benetton cut ties with him after he made remarks about the 2018 Genoa bridge collapse that upset victims’ families and for which he apologised.
Death row and the anorexia campaign
Toscani traced his opposition to the death penalty to following the case of Caryl Chessman as a teenager. His final Benetton campaign of that era, portraits of American prisoners awaiting execution, took three years to make, working with a lawyers’ organisation and visiting nine prisons. He called it the most anti-marketing campaign ever made and rejected reports that it had led to his dismissal, saying he had already decided to leave to work with Tina Brown in New York.
He acknowledged the pain of victims’ families but asked Brian whether killing a murderer is itself murder, and what a parent would do if one child killed another. A murderer, he said, is still a human being.
He also described his 2007 campaign for the brand Nolita, which used a nude image of a severely underweight model to confront anorexia in fashion. With a tiny budget, a few posters and newspaper pages during fashion week, the campaign was discussed around the world, and he compared the fashion industry’s silence on the subject to its earlier silence on AIDS.
Migration, technology and the future
Toscani saw the free movement of people as the true test of civilisation. Goods such as a Rolex can travel freely, he said, while many people cannot, and he argued that migration had always brought culture and knowledge. He contrasted America’s capacity to make people from everywhere feel American with what he saw as weaker integration in Europe.
On technology he was sceptical. Anything easy and comfortable, he said, tends to make us stupid, and he likened dependence on screens to a drug. A computer can show the past as never before, but the future can only be seen in the imagination, so young people need to win their independence from the monitor.
He described his workshop for young creatives as underground and experimental, built around the principle of subversion: lifting things up to see what has been lost beneath them, and not being afraid to put your hand where you are not supposed to.
A privileged life and advice for the young
Then 76, Toscani told Brian he had six children, 14 grandchildren of several nationalities, a farm in Tuscany producing wine, and a love of American Quarter Horses. Born under wartime bombing in fascist Italy, he said he had lived through the longest period of peace Europe had known, and considered himself very lucky. Most complaints, he observed, are really complaints about ourselves.
He described success as something measured across all 24 hours of the day, not just at work, and said he welcomed mistakes because they had taken him in directions he would never otherwise have found. The best advice he recalled came from Le Corbusier, who told students to come back when they found two identical clouds.
His message to young creatives was to listen to older people but not trust them, to invent, and to be courageous. He wished young people were less gentle, and said he wanted to be kicked in the backside by a generation with something new to say.
Frequently asked questions
Oliviero Toscani (1942 to 2025) was an Italian photographer and art director born in Milan. He was best known for the provocative Benetton advertising campaigns he created from 1982 to 2000, which addressed racism, AIDS, war and the death penalty, and for co-founding Colors magazine. He also worked for magazines including Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar.
His London Real episode, Be Unique: More Than Fifty Years of Magnificent Failures, was published in June 2018. It was recorded in London in 2018, shortly after he returned to work with Benetton.
Oliviero Toscani died on 13 January 2025, aged 82, in Tuscany. He had spoken publicly in 2024 about living with amyloidosis, a rare disease.
His best-known images for Benetton included multiracial group portraits, three hearts labelled white, black and yellow, a priest and a nun kissing, a man dying of AIDS surrounded by his family, and portraits of American prisoners on death row. Several of these drew strong criticism as well as praise.
In this interview he said he decided to leave himself, having already taken on work with Tina Brown in New York, and rejected press reports that he was fired over the death row campaign. He returned to Benetton in 2018. That second period ended in 2020, when Benetton ended the relationship after his remarks about the 2018 Genoa bridge collapse, for which he apologised.
He said a real creative person does not know they are creative and does not go looking for ideas. Instead they act, in total insecurity, on what they feel they must do. He believed the moment of greatest insecurity is often the moment of greatest creativity, and that the search for consensus produces mediocrity.
It was a long-running portrait project for which Toscani set up a white background in streets and squares around the world and photographed passers-by. By 2018 he said he had made about 75,000 portraits, and that nobody he photographed was ugly.
It is a 2015 retrospective book of Toscani’s work, covering fashion photography, advertising and reportage. He told Brian that he had never archived his own work, so his assistants and friends assembled it from old magazine pages, and that the publisher initially disliked the title.
He told them not to listen too closely to older people, to invent, and to be courageous. He said young people should not wait for others to do things for them, and that he wanted them to surprise him with something new.
Full transcript
Read the full transcript of Brian Rose’s interview with Oliviero Toscani
00:00:00 Opening highlights
Oliviero Toscani: Great art produces discussion. You shouldn’t give the people what they want; give the people what they need.
Oliviero Toscani: I use photography because photography is the only communication that we look at in silence.
Oliviero Toscani: Technology can make you stupid. The future you cannot see in the monitor; it’s just your imagination.
Oliviero Toscani: A creative person does, in total insecurity, what he feels to do. The moment of your biggest insecurity is the moment of your biggest creativity.
Oliviero Toscani: The problem is not to be number one. The problem is to be unique.
Oliviero Toscani: I go around the world with a white background and I photograph people. I call it the human race. We are not all the same, we are all different, and nobody is ugly. When they look at you, it’s like angels.
00:01:36 London Real intro and promo
Brian Rose: They say that the human race is doomed, that we have lost touch with our true nature, that the media has corrupted us and that the planet has no future. I disagree. I believe that humanity is full of hope and that our salvation lies within each one of us. My name is Brian Rose and my job is to listen, the oldest method of learning known to man. Each week I seek out individuals that are changing the world, people who are living and thinking in a different way. Their stories will challenge your beliefs, make you question your choices and perhaps inspire you to change. I never planned on doing any of this, but now I can’t stop. Join me on this mission and make humanity something we can all be proud of.
[London Real promo removed]
00:03:51 Brian introduces Oliviero Toscani
Brian Rose: You’ve seen the images: AIDS patients, war victims, a nun and a priest kissing. This was the face of Benetton, the Italian clothing maker, whose image was run by Oliviero Toscani as head of marketing. He did something different from what any brand had ever done before. He put out ideas that the whole culture was facing, whether it was death row inmates or anything else, and challenged us to think about them from a branding perspective. He said, “Brian, make sure you’re new, you’re unique. Make sure your art provokes other people.” That’s exactly what I plan on doing with his ideas at London Real in the future. I really enjoyed my time with Oliviero. He’s a fascinating man who has travelled the world and takes amazing photographs, and that’s what this episode is all about. I think you’re really going to enjoy it.
[London Real promo removed]
00:05:55 London in the 1960s
Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Oliviero Toscani, the award-winning Italian photographer and creative pioneer who changed the face of advertising. Your work has been awarded four Golden Lions at Cannes, and you’ve been the creative force behind many famous brands, including Chanel, Toyota and the Italian fashion company Benetton. Working there from 1982 to the year 2000, you became world renowned and incredibly successful as a professional provocateur who took risks, provoked dialogue and brought a social conscience into advertising by using images of AIDS patients, war and prisoners on death row. In 2015 you published a book titled More Than Fifty Years of Magnificent Failures. Oliviero, welcome to London Real.
Oliviero Toscani: Thank you.
Brian Rose: Tell me about your relationship with London. What has this place meant to you, and how does it rank when it comes to art, creativity and advertising?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, I wasn’t such a good student in high school. Instead of going to school I used to go to the movies all the time. And of course I liked to travel. At that time we travelled by hitchhiking, and London was a place to go. When I ended up in art school I came to London, in 1959 or 1960. I was in Brighton, with all those riots.
Brian Rose: Riots, yeah.
Oliviero Toscani: I was there to learn English, you know, with a school, and my first experience was Brighton.
Brian Rose: Brighton was a very popular city then. Do you remember the movie Quadrophenia?
Oliviero Toscani: Yes, Brighton. The mods and the rockers on the beach.
Brian Rose: So were you on a motorcycle?
Oliviero Toscani: No, no, no, we didn’t have motorcycles. We were rich kids. And then, when I was at school, I used to come to London, and it happened that I was a guest student at the Royal College in 1962. It was a time of a lot of change. Now, when I see television talk about swinging London in the 60s, in the early 60s it wasn’t such a thing. London was the saddest town in the world. Foggy. I think they stopped the rationing of bread in 1960 or 61, so you can imagine, a very poor country still, after the war. Swinging London was just a thousand young people from art school who were swinging a little bit.
Brian Rose: And you were one of them.
Oliviero Toscani: Of course. You have to be there, right? You have to be there all the time.
Brian Rose: What was the Royal College like back then? What were you learning and who were you spending time with?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, I didn’t learn much at the Royal College, but the Beatles had started, you know, and we were learning relations, especially with girls. It was the beginning of a different relationship between boys and girls. We were probably the first generation talking to girls. It was a real cultural revolution: Mary Quant, the miniskirt, you know. That’s it. London has been very important to me. I never really studied English; that’s how I learned.
Brian Rose: Just by being here, being around. But when I think of where you’re from, Italy, Milan, or Tuscany where you live, I think of great art, great fashion, great culture. When we think of London we think of different things. We don’t normally think of it as a creative hub.
Oliviero Toscani: Well, Italy probably has more of a classic culture, but at that time the modern action was going on here. For a young person London was the cultural place to go, to learn, to see what was going on.
00:10:42 California and life on the cutting edge
Brian Rose: And then after that came America. You moved on from London to America.
Oliviero Toscani: America was a shock. I went there the first time in 1964. I won a competition for Pan Am while I was at school, a photography competition, linked with the World’s Fair in New York in 1964.
Brian Rose: Wow.
Oliviero Toscani: And then from there of course I went to California. I wanted to see it, and I thought, this is the place where things are happening. San Francisco, and of course the hippies and all that, at that time.
Brian Rose: Was it important for you as an artist to surround yourself with people on the cutting edge of culture?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, you have to be on the cutting edge all the time if you want to. It’s an instinct, you know. You find yourself a place on the edge. I think it comes naturally, to try to discover something else. You have to be curious. You want to be alive. You know something is going on, so you race around the corner, and around the corner there is always something better. You keep on opening up. It’s like that.
Brian Rose: And what was California like back then, in the 60s? What was different there?
Oliviero Toscani: I don’t know what happened. It was a magic that happened. Peace and love, free speech, Berkeley University. There was an energy. It’s very much a combination of individuals, because we are all individuals, who get together and suddenly make bigger waves. Sometimes one starts and then the whole thing grows and grows. It’s great to go around the world and look for that.
Brian Rose: Are you still doing that?
Oliviero Toscani: Oh yeah, that’s my work. At this moment, somewhere in the world, somebody is thinking, hoping, dreaming of something that is going to be the future, that is going to have an incredible impact on the future life of the world. I think I’m very lucky to think like that, to believe that, and all the time I’m looking for evolution in a positive way, something that will help us to live better.
Brian Rose: You’re still excited by humanity and what we can create.
Oliviero Toscani: Very. Humanity is the subject, humanity is the object, humanity is the task.
Brian Rose: The task. And it always has been for you?
Oliviero Toscani: That’s the definition of art. It always has been, for any kind of art, if you look at the movies or painting, or the Renaissance mentality. There are some people who did terrible things to humanity, but they still had to deal with humanity. We have to be aware of that. Humanity is the thing we deal with.
00:14:29 What creativity really is
Brian Rose: If I’m an 18-year-old and I come to you and say, “Oliviero, what is creativity? Teach me,” what do you tell them?
Oliviero Toscani: It’s just a word, a word to explain a consequence. When you say “I’m a creative person”, only stupid people say “I’m a creative person”. A real creative person doesn’t know he’s a creative person. A real creative person doesn’t look for ideas. Advertising people look for ideas, the creative directors in advertising agencies. Creative director: not even God thought he was a director. He did everything alone. They look for ideas, and if you look for an idea, it means you haven’t got one. A creative person is somebody who does, in total insecurity, what he feels to do. Then it will be judged, and people may say, “Look at that, that’s a creative thing.” When you are really creative you are not sure. Probably the moment of your biggest insecurity is the moment of your biggest creativity. So you shouldn’t be afraid to be afraid, to be insecure. You have to go for it.
Brian Rose: OK. And great artists put themselves on the edge of insecurity all the time.
Oliviero Toscani: Risk and insecurity belong to creativity, belong to fortune, belong to great achievement. That’s it.
00:16:18 Political correctness and the meaning of provocation
Oliviero Toscani: And today we talk all the time about security. We talk all the time about being politically correct. Which politics? Political mediocrity.
Brian Rose: What does it mean to you, “politically correct”, when you hear that phrase?
Oliviero Toscani: Politically correct for what kind of party? So I ask myself. Well, I’ve got my own politics, and I’m very politically correct for myself. I never went to prison, for example.
Brian Rose: But political correctness is the destroyer of art, in your opinion?
Oliviero Toscani: Totally, yes. We talk about provoking. Provocation has got a negative meaning, usually. But to provoke peace, to provoke laughter, to provoke a better life, to provoke understanding: that is provoking. When I go to the movies or I read a book, I want to be provoked; otherwise, what is the interest? All art has to provoke something, otherwise it’s not art. The big problem is that from school we teach people to look for consensus, and the search for consensus produces mediocrity. You shouldn’t look for consensus. You should just be what you are. Your big richness is your individuality, your personality. We are not all the same. We are not the same at all. There are no two people the same. We are all different, and that’s an incredible richness. And today they say we have to say we are all the same. Not the same. Whether you are black or white or Chinese, intelligent or stupid, we have to respect individuality. There are no two people the same. Every person is a unique piece of art.
00:18:40 The Human Race portrait project
Oliviero Toscani: I’ve been doing work for ten years where I go around the world with a white background. I put it in the piazza, the street, public places, and I photograph people. I call it the human race. I’ve got about 75,000 portraits of people, with their signature, their name and the place where I took the picture. It’s an incredible gallery. They look into the camera and you can see their soul, and nobody is ugly. I photograph people you wouldn’t believe, street people, and when they look at you it’s like angels.
Brian Rose: You prefer that over working with a model?
Oliviero Toscani: I photographed incredible models, top models. I photographed many of them. But they are empty people. Photographically an actor is better, because he’s taking a part. But a fashion model, after three times you photograph her, you want to find a new one. I photographed the first big models in magazines. People like them because they are empty. They don’t give you any problem, they are not provoking. They are just a morphological form.
Brian Rose: You hate that.
Oliviero Toscani: No soul in the eyes, no expression.
00:20:14 Why photography
Brian Rose: Why photography? You could have chosen many different art forms. You grew up watching movies, you said. What movies?
Oliviero Toscani: American movies, of course. All the fifties, you know. And then my father used to be a news photographer for the Corriere della Sera, the main Italian newspaper, the main Milanese one. I was born in Milan. So it was in the family. But today, everybody can take pictures. Everybody here.
Brian Rose: Right, right.
Oliviero Toscani: But when you say “a writer”, you don’t think of somebody who can write or type; you think of an author. Photography today is exactly the same. I use photography to express my vision of what’s going on. I’m a witness of my time, and to witness my time I use photography. I could use music or writing or movies or even design to be a witness of your time. I use photography because I think photography, in one way, is a profession that is getting lost. You’re not a photographer just because you can handle the camera. To be a photographer seriously today, you have to be an author, a screenwriter. You have to think of an image in your head. Then you have to be a set designer and a movie director, because you decide, “I want a model walking down the street, and she smiles.” You have to think what you want. Then you have to be a director of photography: the light, darker here, brighter there. And at the end you have to be a cameraman behind the camera. And you have to be a producer. I once spent one year to find the right little girl. I needed an angel who looked like the devil, a child with devilish eyes. That’s what a photographer is. Of course you can be a war reporter, but there you’re just a cameraman, because the war has been decided by somebody else. The author is somebody else. The scene is already set: the tanks are there, the smoke is there, the dead are there, the blood is there. So you just have to be a cameraman.
Brian Rose: I understand.
Oliviero Toscani: But to be Fellini, to be a moviemaker, you have to think: how do I shoot it, how does it have to look to get that feeling, that engagement, what do we need? And the still photograph is the only communication medium today that has that impact, more than a movie or the news on television. You remember the picture of the child dead on the beach, the refugee boy? Everybody knows it. In front of that picture everybody thought about what was going on. Why? Because with still photography we engage our own responsibility towards society and what’s going on. Photography, as painting used to be once, is the only art, the only communication, that we look at in silence. And in that silence you engage your own responsibility: where do I stand in front of what’s going on in the world? The still image has this impact. That’s why I like it.
Brian Rose: It’s still the most powerful form of creative art.
Oliviero Toscani: On top of that, probably 90% of what we know, we know because we’ve seen pictures of it. Pictures are more real than reality.
Brian Rose: And you could say that a video or a short film or a movie tells you how to feel about it.
Oliviero Toscani: Sure.
Brian Rose: So you can actually just check out. You don’t have to be responsible.
Oliviero Toscani: Sure. It’s taking the responsibility to say this is nice, this is bad. It’s not your responsibility. But in front of a still picture you say, “Where do I stand here?” It doesn’t even have to be dramatic. Any picture you look at, of something you never saw before, you want to see it, you get engaged, you’re interested. In the end, we know almost everything through images. It’s how we learn. Everybody’s got an opinion of Trump, but how many people know Trump really? We know him because we’ve seen images, and interpretation, and the point of view of somebody else. And photography has existed for not even two centuries. History before that, we’re not really sure about. I can say something provocative: if there had been a camera at the time of Jesus Christ, probably the Bible would have been written in a different way. I don’t know. I just ask myself. I would have liked to see those miracles and things like that documented: who was right, who was wrong, how did it happen. It’s not long that we have been able to see pictures. Just imagine, once there were no magazines, no television, no newspapers. People used to walk into churches and see their God and the Madonna there. It was the only place to see painting. So it’s not long that we have known.
00:25:25 Intelligent clients and the duty to improve
Brian Rose: When you started at Benetton in 82, were you already a great photographer?
Oliviero Toscani: Oh yeah. For most major magazines, fashion magazines.
Brian Rose: What made you improve your photography the most? What was the assignment where you felt like, wow, I got much better, or I matured?
Oliviero Toscani: The quality of architecture depends on the intelligence of the commissioner. You understand? The intelligence of your client is basic to the quality of your work. I don’t call them clients, I call them commissioners. They want to tell you, “Build me that church.” If it’s an intelligent Pope, you will have a first-class church. If it’s a mediocre Pope, you will have a mediocre church. It has always been like that through history. Lorenzo the Magnificent was an intelligent commissioner. The mediocre ones limit you. They get involved, they know more than you know, and they tell you, “Do it like that,” and “That’s too expensive.” So it’s very difficult. First of all, any artist has to be careful to choose his client, if you want to go far and get your freedom as an artist. Let’s call it freedom, the opportunity to express yourself, and that is when you are the most valuable. The first thing you have to do as an artist is to enrich your commissioner.
Brian Rose: Enrich him?
Oliviero Toscani: Yes, make him rich. Today everything is a question of money, but it’s not just personal money. It’s a question of power, cultural sensitivity, education, progress. That is the kind of enrichment.
Brian Rose: So you have that responsibility.
Oliviero Toscani: I think everybody should have that. Everybody who is working for somebody else should have that responsibility to bring some improvement to what he is doing. That is the excitement of work, I think. Not saying, “Well, it’s like that,” but “Let’s try.” That’s why you are on the edge sometimes. You don’t go with the flow, because you don’t improve if you go with the flow.
00:30:08 Give people what they need, not what they want
Brian Rose: Do you think great art divides? Do you think half the people will hate great art and half the people will love it?
Oliviero Toscani: Great art produces discussion. It will always be like that. The other thing is: you shouldn’t give the people what they want, you should give the people what they need. I don’t know much about medicine, for example, but I believe a great doctor can cure me. I won’t tell him how; he knows what I need. Great teachers know what their pupils need, so they are great teachers. Because if you give people what they want, they would want the same thing all the time. You have to bring improvement to humanity.
Brian Rose: I watched this great series on Netflix recently called The Defiant Ones. It’s about Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre, who later sold their headphones company to Apple, and it was about Interscope Records in the 90s. He had artists like Dr Dre and Eminem and Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson, really controversial artists, getting banned by the government, doing crazy things on stage. And Jimmy Iovine said you have to leave your artists alone and let them do whatever they want to do. Just stay out of their way.
Oliviero Toscani: Yes, the artist, like the student or the child, has to be listened to. You express yourself when you’re free, of course. And when you are oppressed you can also express yourself a lot, because you’re looking for freedom of expression. So there’s something very sensitive there that you have to understand. The artist is free, yes, but he is working for the community. He doesn’t work for himself.
00:32:30 Art, power and the artist as mercenary
Oliviero Toscani: Great artists always worked for power. Let’s call it art: art is the highest, most interesting expression of communication. Art and power always want to work together. Power needs art to impose itself: the Pope, the king, the castles, the churches, the paintings, the portraits. They need art to express themselves. And art needs power to express itself. There was a painter, Caravaggio. He was the most sinful person, a murderer, but he painted the best Madonnas, using prostitutes as models. He transcended the commission. I’m not a believer, but when I see the Madonna of Caravaggio, even if I don’t believe in the Madonna, I really get touched. So this is the artist: the one who can transcend the commission.
Brian Rose: OK. So they always went together: where there was power, there was art. There’s the National Gallery here in London, and you can go and see every painting and research each one, and there’s always a history of some powerful person who wrote the cheque and made it happen. You forget that sometimes when you look at the art, but it is married to power.
Oliviero Toscani: The artist is actually a mercenary. Big artists have been big mercenaries. Leonardo da Vinci was painting the Last Supper in Milan, and after three weeks when he wasn’t paid, he left Milan. They went and grabbed him on the way to Florence with the money to bring him back to finish the Last Supper. He wasn’t paid. Mercenary.
00:35:03 How Benetton began: no agencies, no market research
Brian Rose: Let’s talk about you and Benetton. When you look back on that period from 82 to 2000, it’s been a while since you started. That was a unique period. How did that start, and what do you remember?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, Luciano is a very special person. Luciano Benetton called me because before Benetton I used to do Esprit in California, and then Fiorucci in Italy. So Luciano called me and said, “What can we do?” I said, “OK, listen, simple. I don’t work with advertising agencies. You and me. I propose, you say yes or no. Get rid of the marketing system, the marketing research. We should know what we want.” And I had that experience at Esprit, with no marketing research.
Brian Rose: They let you do what you know.
Oliviero Toscani: At Esprit there was a guy called Doug Tompkins, who actually died, you know. Great guy, a yogi, who left the biggest donation of land to Chile. He left an incredible piece of land to Chile. He was an environmentalist, a great guy. I used to work with him before Benetton. I always worked with people who were like that. I don’t accept working with advertising agencies, because they are afraid to try. I don’t even start. I have to have the gratification of my work. I don’t work for the money. Actually, if you work for the money you probably don’t even make so much money. When you work with freedom, then you can actually achieve something. There are values that are more important than money, especially in working life, I think.
Brian Rose: So why did you go into advertising? Why not be a painter, you know, why advertising?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, I think that’s a place where you can be an artist today. Traditional art is just the private property of collectors. Advertising is public. Art has to be public, of course. And advertising is the field where most of the images you consume come from. A poster posted all over the world, fantastic. What art can achieve that? So Luciano Benetton called me: “Let’s try it.”
Brian Rose: And you said, “I need complete creative control. You and me, just the two of us.”
Oliviero Toscani: Yes. And of course you have to know what the problem is, you have to be successful, but we didn’t follow the rules of marketing. Actually, we listened to the marketing office, what they were planning, and then we just did the opposite. Anything they said, we did the opposite. If they decided to make it white, we made it black. If they decided to go there, we went somewhere else. So you are unique. Everybody follows, so the problem is not to be number one. The problem is to be unique. If you want to be number one, it’s very expensive, and it doesn’t mean that you’re good. It’s just number one of a bunch of phonies, number one of mediocrity. If you are unique, you might be interesting. So we tried to be like that. And we asked ourselves, what do people really want? They want to know what’s going on in the world. They don’t care if we make the sweater better than the other one. Of course it’s better than the other one, of course it’s the best price. I demanded a serious product, fair and well done. But in the end, we go public, and we have the opportunity to communicate what this world is, what’s going on. Especially at that time, young people wanted to know about AIDS. They were saying it was a homosexual thing. We said no, we knew it wasn’t like that. In the meantime I also made a magazine called Colors. I don’t know if you remember it. It had nothing to do with the market. And by 2000 everybody in the advertising world was against me. I had critics saying, “He’s going to destroy the brand, he’s going to make the company a failure.” When I left in 2000, the label was one of the top five labels in the world. The company was an incredible economic success, going against the rules of marketing. The rule of marketing is mediocrity. Everything today, especially on television, you have to conform to the rule. I don’t know why.
00:40:50 Leaving Benetton and coming back
Brian Rose: So you spent 18 years there. Did you miss it after you left, until now? What happened then?
Oliviero Toscani: I had an offer to go and work for Tina Brown at Miramax, on the magazine, and it was so good. Benetton was a big success, and I wanted to go on, you know. At that age I thought I had to take my chance now. So I did a lot of things. I don’t know if you know the anorexia campaign.
Brian Rose: Yes, yes.
Oliviero Toscani: But now I’m back at Benetton. You know that?
Brian Rose: Yes, I know that.
Oliviero Toscani: Luciano, after five years, left to the managers. He went around the world on his boat. We always stayed friends, of course. And then he realised the company was falling apart. That was already two years ago. Advertising agencies, marketing research, advertising agencies from Holland or England, a lot of trendy agencies, fashion things that worked for a while. When he left in 2006 or 2008, the company was doing incredibly well economically, and then it was losing. But this family has made an incredible fortune from Benetton, because they own other companies. They don’t need this company, but it’s an affection for the company. So he called me back.
Brian Rose: You’re getting the band back together. He’s 82?
Oliviero Toscani: He’s going to be 83 now.
Brian Rose: OK. Like he’s in his twenties.
00:43:01 Multiracial campaigns and the free movement of people
Brian Rose: Let’s talk about some of the things you did in the 80s. I’m wondering where some of that came from. I remember when I was a kid, I must have been 10, 11, 12, 14 years old, the multiracial ads. We’d see all these different colours of people that you never saw in advertisements before. Where did that come from? And were you living in Italy then, in America, abroad?
Oliviero Toscani: I was living everywhere.
Brian Rose: Do you think that affects your art?
Oliviero Toscani: No. I tell you, I’m a witness of my time. I went around the world, and the world is made like that.
Brian Rose: But if you had lived in Tuscany for five years straight you wouldn’t have had all those ideas.
Oliviero Toscani: It wasn’t an idea. I tell you, I don’t invent. I’m a situationist. A simple situationist. Let me explain. I’m in a place and I look around: this is a situation, and that is always very interesting, and you learn a lot. In this room, I would simply photograph it. Simply like that, right away. Do you understand? The world is made like that. I didn’t invent anything. It’s so simple, so clear.
Brian Rose: But Italy isn’t known for promoting its multiracial citizens.
Oliviero Toscani: That is the problem right now, on the agenda now. We realise that immigration goes on, and there is a question of humanity and integration. A Rolex watch is welcome and is free to travel around the world. Everybody wants the Rolex. But me, as a human being, I cannot even go to some countries. Some people are not accepted. So we are very much behind as a humanity about that. We will start to be civilised, and we are not yet, of course we are not civilised, the day there is free movement of people on the earth. Because with the movement of people on the earth we get culture. You are American, you brought the blue jeans. I brought the pizza. You can eat pizza in blue jeans. This is a simple example, but you understand: people come with their knowledge. It’s like a big market. So how can you accept this separation? So stupid. For many years they told you, the American boy, that the Russians were bad people, and then suddenly the American boy finds a pretty Russian girl and says, “Well, they’re not so dangerous.” Humanity is much more intelligent than politics.
Brian Rose: And these are some of the lessons you were showing us with Benetton. The multiracial ads, the hearts: black, white and yellow hearts.
Oliviero Toscani: Yeah.
Brian Rose: And what did people say?
Oliviero Toscani: I don’t know. When you say ultra-banal things, people get upset. I don’t know, they are crazy. It was almost stupid, ultra-banality. It’s a new word, a neologism: ultra-banality. Modern banality.
00:47:10 AIDS, and provoking interest rather than shock
Brian Rose: So you put three hearts next to each other, one that says white, black and yellow, trying to make your point. Then you went big on the AIDS epidemic, because people weren’t talking about it. People forget, back then it was such a big part of who we were in school. The fashion world didn’t want to talk about it.
Oliviero Toscani: Oh, I remember.
Brian Rose: People worried about sitting on toilet seats in the early days. No one knew.
Oliviero Toscani: And another thing: I used to put the ads in gay magazines, minority magazines, to get the minorities involved. To publish the pictures, I used those magazines.
Brian Rose: Why did you put AIDS on the front face of Benetton?
Oliviero Toscani: Because young people wanted to know. They wanted to talk about it. It was a big taboo. Nobody talked about AIDS. There was a false interpretation of it. Reagan said it was a homosexual thing.
Brian Rose: And then you used the image of a man dying of AIDS.
Oliviero Toscani: It looked like those pictures published in newspapers and magazines that people just look at like that. I said, this is a fact, so let’s promote what’s going on. Wars and discrimination and racism are primitive expressions of this humanity. We are not supposed to be like that. Everybody has to be engaged, me too. When I see the thing that touches me, I know I’m involved too, socially involved.
Brian Rose: Were you constantly looking for the next thing to provoke the public, to shock the public?
Oliviero Toscani: No. I don’t want to shock, I want to provoke interest. And there are people who get shocked because they don’t want to move from their point of view. There are people who feel uncomfortable if they have to change, even if they understand it is right. They don’t want to change. They stick there because they are afraid to lose, I don’t know what. We need to be flexible, to understand. You have to put yourself in discussion every day, every minute, every second. Don’t be afraid to change your opinion the day after, if you think it’s better. You will live a better life. Religious limitations, moral limitations, sticking to a position: that will ruin your life. There are some people who really don’t want to, I don’t say improve, but they don’t want to live at all, because that’s not living if you’re not changing.
Brian Rose: Evolving.
Oliviero Toscani: That is changing, right. It’s not that you change your mind every day. My T-shirt of yesterday and today, tomorrow will go in the washing machine, and I will put on a new T-shirt.
00:51:08 The death row campaign
Brian Rose: Your last campaign for Benetton was the prisoners on death row. What happened with that campaign, did it surprise you, and why was that your last campaign for them?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, since I was a child, a teenager, there was an American prisoner called Caryl Chessman. He was sentenced to death, and he was put on the chair, I think, 13 times, and every time he was taken away at the last minute because the governor decided otherwise. I was following this case. It intrigued me. When they take you to put you on the chair, you’re dead already. They killed you already. That fact really shocked me as a child. And so I got involved in the movement for the elimination of the death penalty. In Italy and in Europe the death penalty doesn’t exist. It’s not allowed. And one day it will be denied in the States too, for sure. It’s like talking about slavery. Look what they had to go through to eliminate slavery. The death penalty is the same: one day in the United States there won’t be any more. So I wanted to do something, and I had the opportunity to say something. It took me three years to do that campaign. First of all, to find an organisation of lawyers in America who were against the death penalty. With them I managed to go to nine different prisons and photograph those inmates. Nine different prisons, three years.
Brian Rose: You’re very relentless.
Oliviero Toscani: So when I say, “OK, I’m going to do something,” I decide what to do: photograph single people sentenced to death who were waiting to be executed. From the moment I decided to do it until it was published took three years, and I went through all the procedures to get permits. We went to Texas and they said yes at the last minute. It wasn’t easy. Anyhow, it was an incredible experience. Of course people say, “What about the families of the victims?” I understand that very well. But what would you do if the assassin were your son? Is it murder to kill a murderer, or not? To kill somebody, even if he is a murderer? Say you have a son or a daughter, and one killed the brother or the sister. What do you do, kill him? This is the extreme position of a human being. You’re in front of this question.
Brian Rose: If you think of everybody as brothers, then it’s not an obvious solution at all.
Oliviero Toscani: No. Killing is not a solution. He’s a murderer, of course. I’m not defending the beast. But he’s still a human being.
Brian Rose: How was that campaign received? What surprised you about the reception? What happens when you do one of these, Oliviero? Do you just do it, close your eyes and move on?
Oliviero Toscani: No, I just go with my instinct.
Brian Rose: Do you listen to the rest?
Oliviero Toscani: Of course I listen to everybody. I wouldn’t be able to go straight like that if I didn’t listen. My instinct is the result of everything I have listened to.
Brian Rose: But are there certain people you ignore? The newspapers? Do you listen to Luciano? Do you listen to everyone?
Oliviero Toscani: I didn’t ask Luciano, you know. I was responsible for what I was doing. Of course I listened. You have to listen carefully, and then in the end you make your decision. Technically that campaign was the most anti-marketing campaign: you go and photograph people that society wants to eliminate, with a product that is not for sale. And it’s the most famous campaign ever done. It’s the opposite of the advertising system. I didn’t know it would be like that. Of course I thought of it as an experiment. I like experiments, because we have to challenge, you know, to bring humanity forward. You have to push. You have to go and try.
Brian Rose: And you got lawsuits on the back of this. What happened with that?
Oliviero Toscani: Who cares. Actually, they say that Luciano fired me, but it’s not true at all. Before I finished that campaign I was already working in New York for Tina Brown and Miramax. So I decided, and told Luciano, “Look, now is enough, I’ve got to go off for a while.” And he said OK. They always have to find a reason, and the press finally said, “Ah, he made a mistake, so Benetton fired him.” It’s not true at all. I’m back now. But it will always be like that. I realised later that I was really disturbing the marketing system. I had all the advertising gurus against me, all the big organisations, the creative directors and the strategic planners.
00:59:04 Magnificent failures and the anorexia campaign
Brian Rose: When you look back at the Benetton career, do you see magnificent failures, like you talk about in the book?
Oliviero Toscani: The Magnificent Failures: this British publisher wanted me to make a book about my work. And I have to tell you, I never archived anything in my life. I’ve got no property concerning my work.
Brian Rose: Not a collector, not a saver. You just do the work, give it to the company and move on.
Oliviero Toscani: Yeah, yeah. I’m free. That’s a better way to create.
Brian Rose: Maybe it has a price economically.
Oliviero Toscani: But I don’t care economically. I’m a very privileged person, not caring about the economy. It’s true. Money is the best way to buy your freedom, if you can get freedom without doing all the processes. So my assistants and friends and everybody else made the book, going and finding the pages from magazines. The book is made of what they found and put together. And I looked at it: fifty years of magnificent failures. That’s the title. The publisher didn’t want that title. He said, “Oh my God, it won’t sell.” The title was very good, the opposite way. Everything is there: my fashion photography for Vogue, GQ and Elle magazine, advertising, reportage. Everything is there, because I’m not a classic fashion photographer, still-life photographer or advertising photographer. I’m somebody who uses photography to express what I live and experience.
Brian Rose: Tell me about the anorexia pictures and what you were trying to achieve.
Oliviero Toscani: Well, it was the question of looking around and seeing what’s happening. I was a fashion photographer, and suddenly I started to see those models coming in, thin, white, with their bones showing. This is what was happening. Before, I worked with really beautiful girls, very beautiful girls. And then suddenly, at the beginning of the 2000s, little skinny skeletons started to appear. So I started to find out why, and I did a film about a girl who was 16 years old. Now she’s OK, as she says, but she came very close to dying. And then there was a client, a clothing company, very provincial, local somehow, and they wanted to become known. I said, “OK, I’m going to make you something special, but be prepared, because the day after you will have CNN and BBC arriving to find out what you’re doing.” I did a campaign with the smallest budget possible: one poster in Milan, one poster in Rome, one double page in Libération, one double page in La Repubblica, during fashion week. The brand was Nolita. Everybody was talking about it. It was a picture of a naked woman who looked very, very skeletal, a model. Suddenly, like with AIDS, the world of fashion, which is supposed to be the most positive world, was resisting talking about it, because it was a terrible problem.
Brian Rose: Disgusting, yeah. But now we know it’s a problem. Before, we just weren’t talking about it.
Oliviero Toscani: Yeah.
Brian Rose: And you made that fashion brand famous.
Oliviero Toscani: Very, very famous, for the first time.
01:03:58 Today’s artists, politics and America
Brian Rose: I’m going to get you telling us what we should do at London Real. I bet you’ve got some great ideas. Tell me who’s doing great work today. Who is the Oliviero of today? Is it a different form? Is it still photography? Is it music videos? We see things like Beyoncé and Kanye West pushing the limit. Are you impressed by the artists of today?
Oliviero Toscani: There is always something very interesting going on. The only field where it is not interesting is politics, especially in Italy.
Brian Rose: But you ran for office in 2007?
Oliviero Toscani: Not really. A friend of mine asked me to be responsible for culture for his town. He was a great art critic in Italy who became mayor of a town in Sicily.
Brian Rose: Nothing possible for you in politics?
Oliviero Toscani: Impossible.
Brian Rose: I don’t see you in politics. What do you see in politics? I had a guest here one time who was a member of parliament, and he said, “Brian, politics is show business for ugly people.” What do you say?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, it is a lack of courage. When you are mediocre, then probably you can have a career in politics, number one.
Brian Rose: What do you see in Trump from an artistic perspective? You said art and power go together. How does he use art?
Oliviero Toscani: Just in America could something like that happen. He was elected. He didn’t make a coup, he was elected. Interesting: America goes from Obama to Trump. It’s a great country. Now this is the last step of the American fantasy. The next president is going to be great. Finally we will have an almost perfect president after Trump. What is America? Everything. If you want to talk badly about a country, you have to talk about America. Yes, the worst things happened there, the worst people are there, the worst, the ugliest things are in America. And then, OK, let’s talk about the good countries: in the end you talk about America, even if you don’t want to. Probably not for the present, but you have to talk about the past.
Brian Rose: You love America?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, it’s a combination of hell and paradise.
Brian Rose: Spoken like an American.
Oliviero Toscani: And what is Italy? It’s a geographical reality. It goes from the Alps to Sicily. Who is the Italian? The mountaineer, the mafioso, the Sicilian? It goes from the almost German guy to the almost African guy. Italy is interesting now because it is the bridge from Europe to Africa, and the future there is going to be interesting. There are a lot of things going on now with immigration. I don’t know why it’s still not understood that migration is the richest opportunity. Look at America: they are people from everywhere. You go there and find a black guy who says, “I’m American.” Then a guy who looks Chinese to us says, “Well, I’m American.” And Europeans are American. In France it’s not like that. It’s not even like that in England. You ask people, and they are British, but they tell you, “No, I’m from Africa.”
Brian Rose: Right. Why is that? That’s not integrated.
Oliviero Toscani: No. And we are losing economically too. It’s wrong. The future is integration. We are all different, we aren’t all the same, but we have to put that in our heads. When you think, we call people a foreigner, a forestiero, an alien. I remember when I was a teenager and wanted to learn English, there was a book called English for Aliens. I’m not coming from another planet. But I was an alien. You had to stand in line to come into England: “Aliens”. British, aliens. You can imagine Star Wars coming in.
Brian Rose: So this is your new fight, and you’re going to use your art and action for it as well. Integration, immigration.
Oliviero Toscani: Yes. Take a close look at all the opportunities we are missing. That’s the thing. We have to work on that.
01:10:02 Insecurity, technology and imagination
Brian Rose: Why are you back at Benetton?
Oliviero Toscani: Change like that doesn’t happen in life. It’s an incredible chance. I want to put myself in discussion again, you know. I’m not sure it’s going to work. For sure I’m not sure. I’ve actually got a very small percentage of opportunity to win that, but I’m going to try.
Brian Rose: That means you’re at your most creative, then.
Oliviero Toscani: I have to try. But if you’re insecure, that’s terrible. Mamma mia.
Brian Rose: But that’s good.
Oliviero Toscani: Luckily, I sleep at night. That’s my luck. A normal person normally wouldn’t sleep.
Brian Rose: But were you insecure with those campaigns, back in the day, with the priests and the nuns and the AIDS patients and the death row images? You must have been a little insecure.
Oliviero Toscani: Of course. Which means it’s creative. The moment of your insecurity is probably the moment of your best creativity. You shouldn’t be afraid to be afraid, to be insecure. That’s it.
Brian Rose: How are things different now with the internet, mobile technology, everything, when it comes to the work you do for Benetton, compared with 20 years ago?
Oliviero Toscani: In a way it’s much easier. I’m going to do Colors again, but Colors daily, on the internet. In a way it’s easier. On the other hand, it makes me lose a lot of time. Technology can make you stupid.
Brian Rose: Waste time and make you stupid.
Oliviero Toscani: Because anything that is easy and comfortable is stupid. That’s a test. And we are looking for easy and comfortable because we want to be stupid. When you’re stupid, you don’t have responsibility.
Brian Rose: So easy and comfortable is stupid, which is what technology is, and it makes you stupid.
Oliviero Toscani: Yeah, yeah, I think so. A little stupid. We don’t think. Once, when I used to talk to my students about a problem, everybody would think about what they had been reading or hearing or experiencing. Now, the first thing they do is go to the monitor, the computer, Google. You cannot be imaginative in front of a computer. As soon as you close your computer, your brain starts to go. The future you cannot see in the monitor. You can see the past, incredibly, like we never could before. Everything is there. But what is from here to the future is just your imagination. So you have to get away from that dependence. It’s like a drug. It’s a drug that makes you stupid, because a drug is easy and comfortable. What is a drug? The easiest and most comfortable way to get away. So I think young people have to get their independence from that.
01:13:54 Teaching young people to subvert
Brian Rose: You’re going to Venice tonight, and you work with young people there?
Oliviero Toscani: Yes, sure.
Brian Rose: Is this what you teach them? Do you try to teach them these things?
Oliviero Toscani: I don’t teach. I’ve got a bottega, a workshop, a young people’s company. I select them and I try to feel what the future is. In the end, we research. It’s very underground, somehow. We don’t use any models. We are looking for real research, experimental. For example, now we are working on a principle: you have to be high on subversion. When you subvert, you find out a lot of things that you didn’t even think existed. When you move those flagstones, behind there you might find an angel or something that has been lost. You understand? When you uncover, you open, you subvert, and then suddenly you find something that you lost.
Brian Rose: So you investigate, you destroy, you mess things up. To subvert, concretely, do you introduce chaos?
Oliviero Toscani: Yes. OK. You have to go for that. Don’t be afraid to put your hand in some places.
01:15:40 Family, luck and a life lived through history
Brian Rose: Tell me a few things about you. If I asked some of your best friends, “What is Oliviero’s superpower? How is he able to do all the things he does?”, what would they say?
Oliviero Toscani: I don’t know. I’m very quiet. But some people say I’m a very good rider. I’m a very good horseman.
Brian Rose: Much better, yeah. It’s one thing to think of the art; it’s another to actually produce the art. That’s got to be one of your main skills.
Oliviero Toscani: No, but that is different for me. Anything I do is not work. Anything I do is to express myself, to be alive. To be alive. I’ve got six children, three wives, 14 grandchildren. I’m the only one with an Italian passport. I’ve got American grandchildren, French grandchildren, and when they all come together it’s fantastic to see them.
Brian Rose: At what point did you decide that you would do whatever you feel like?
Oliviero Toscani: I don’t know. I’ve been very privileged and lucky, that’s for sure. First of all because I’m healthy, except for some accidents, motorbike, skiing, that happen physically. I’m 76 and healthy. And then I went through an incredible life. I was born in 1942, in a fascist country allied with Germany, with the Nazis. Italy was fascist. I was born there in Milan, under the bombs. I was saved because the bombs didn’t get me. And then I went through free speech, miniskirts, travelling. Suddenly there wasn’t even a need for a passport to go around Europe, the same money for everybody. It’s incredible. It’s the longest span of peace in Europe ever, and I lived it. I came to London in the 60s, dancing with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. I even went to photograph Muhammad Ali boxing. We went through incredible times, and also bad times, up and down. I’ve been very, very privileged, very lucky. So let’s appreciate it. Most people complain all the time. They complain about what surrounds them, but actually they complain about themselves. Most complaints are about yourself. You have to believe.
01:19:10 Fear, success, mistakes and life on the farm
Brian Rose: What scares you?
Oliviero Toscani: Sickness. I’m so afraid of sickness. Sickness, stay away from me, because sickness won’t have any satisfaction with me. The day I get sick, I’ll die in two hours.
Brian Rose: That’s a good threat. What was the worst day of your life, and the best day of your life?
Oliviero Toscani: Well, every day, I hope. Is there such a thing as worst or best? Every day is like that. People talk about success, success at work, economically. I think success is something that you count over the 24 hours of your day. I would like to be successful in my work, and then I go home and my wife looks at me badly: terrible. That’s not success, that’s misery. Everything has to be a success. I try to, up and down, and sometimes you get problems. But if in the morning I haven’t got some problem to solve, what am I here for? You have to solve your problems. You have to get beaten, you have to lose, and say, “OK, start again.” You’ve got nothing to lose by trying. You can lose, but it’s not losing. Only if you don’t do anything can you not make mistakes. You have to make mistakes. Mamma mia, how many mistakes I made. Fantastic. But those mistakes made me take a certain direction, and in that direction I found things that I wouldn’t have lived if I had not made the mistake that took me in that direction. So you have to believe. It’s not a question of optimist or pessimist. I don’t even understand the words. You have to be alive. You have to believe that you are alive, and then one day everything is going to be over. Amen.
Brian Rose: What keeps you awake at night?
Oliviero Toscani: No, no, I’m lucky. I go to bed and I sleep. I don’t sleep much. I don’t dream. That’s true. I don’t remember my dreams.
Brian Rose: You dream during the day.
Oliviero Toscani: That’s what my grandmother used to say: “Oliviero, you dream during the day.” I go to bed and sleep, really, no problem.
Brian Rose: And you love horses?
Oliviero Toscani: Quarter horses. American Quarter Horses. I breed quarter horses.
Brian Rose: That’s a great animal.
Oliviero Toscani: Yeah, animals in general. I’ve got a lot of dogs, and I live on a farm. I produce wine. It’s called OT, Oliviero Toscani. Look up OT wine. About 75,000 bottles, and 90% is exported to the United States, England, Germany, Switzerland. My son is taking care of that. But what I’d like to produce is olive oil, a super olive oil. It’s called Immortal. Olive oil is an ingredient made by a tree that is technically immortal. Very interesting.
Brian Rose: Let’s talk about that next time. We’ll talk about olive oil. All right. So you’re living the life in Tuscany.
Oliviero Toscani: That’s my home. But I’ve still got a place in Paris, where I take my pictures of people, and I work in New York. So I travel. I’m in London today.
01:24:18 Advice and the lesson of the clouds
Brian Rose: Oliviero, I always ask people a few questions at the end. If you could pick up a phone and call the 20-year-old Oliviero and give that young man a bit of advice, maybe he’s in Zurich at this point, and maybe you can tell me why you went to Zurich, what advice would you give him?
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Brian Rose: And on that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received throughout your life? Did you have a teacher, or maybe something your father said, or Luciano? Did anyone ever give you a great piece of advice?
Oliviero Toscani: I don’t know if you know, there was a priest in Italy called Don Milani. Everybody knows Don Milani. Anyhow, probably one of the best was Le Corbusier, the architect. Once he came to my school. It was 1964, I remember. We were in the architecture and design class, and one student said, “Maestro, what can you do that is new today? Everything has been done.” At that time there was a lot going on, and it seemed very difficult for us to make something new. And he said, “Now go out and look at the sky. When you see two clouds the same, come back.” There have never been two clouds the same. From there you understand difference. The big richness of humanity is difference. That’s it. There have never been two people the same. Nature doesn’t make two leaves of grass the same. There have never been two things the same, and there will never be. Only with industry can we make things the same, and they are so boring, with no fantasy. Difference is the richness. So we have to accept difference and flow into that difference.
01:27:24 Advice for young creatives
Brian Rose: It’s good advice. Last question: to the 20-year-old creative watching us now, who wants to make great art one day, what advice do you give them?
Oliviero Toscani: I would tell them: don’t listen to old men like me. Don’t trust anybody over 30. If you’re 20, don’t trust anybody over 25. Listen to them, but invent. And I tell them, I’m waiting for you to tell me something new. So come on, be courageous. Be courageous. You know the big problem today? When I was 20, nobody would say, “What shall we do for young people?” I never heard that. Now all the time they say, “What shall we do for young people?” What are young people doing for me? That’s what should happen. Let them make it, let them do. Don’t make them wait for us to do something for them. This is a major mistake. They have to go ahead, they have to go and grab it. There are incredible young people around. Incredible.
Brian Rose: You work with them, right?
Oliviero Toscani: Yes. They’ve got just one defect: they are too civilised. When I was 20 I was much wilder. They are more educated, they are more understanding, and they don’t make bad art. I don’t know if that is good. They are so gentle.
Brian Rose: They shouldn’t be so gentle. I guess they’re not going to like this, but they should kick us in the ass.
Oliviero Toscani: You say it like that. They should kick us old men, yes. I want to be kicked in the ass, for a good reason.
Brian Rose: When you were 20, did you trust anybody over 25?
Oliviero Toscani: That was the sentence: “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” No, don’t trust anybody. I remember, six months after a song came out, it was already an old song, last year’s song. I’m tired of getting in the car, switching on the radio and listening to the Beatles. I’ve had enough of the Beatles. I want to hear the new Beatles. Fifty years of the Beatles is ridiculous. It’s as if, in the sixties, we had been listening to the music of 1910. Come on.
Brian Rose: That’s great advice. Oliviero, thank you so much for coming here. I wanted you here because I wanted to learn from you, and this whole idea of your most insecure moment potentially being your most creative moment is fascinating to me. Going against what everyone else says, against the consensus, and not trying to be number one. And great art is just a beautiful thing. It’s like a kick in the ass or a slap in the face. It’s a beautiful, rare thing, and I’m always trying to find it.
Oliviero Toscani: Don’t think too much. Just go ahead. You are unique. There is just you in the world. Your richness is what you have. Give it to the others. It might be great, it might be not. Get back to your commissioner. The commissioner is how I call them. It’s not English, the right word: commission. You want me to give you a commission? And get back to the community, get back to the world. That’s your job as an artist.
Brian Rose: Take risks. OK. I love it. I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do with Benetton.
Oliviero Toscani: I don’t know yet.
Brian Rose: I’m excited. I’ll wake up one morning and see what you’ve done. And I’m excited to see what you do with migration and immigration.
Oliviero Toscani: That will be the subject. OK, yeah, sure.
Brian Rose: All right. On London Real we say it’s about the journey. I wish you well on your journey, sir. Thank you so much.
Oliviero Toscani: Very classy.
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