The Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, known for his provocative marketing campaigns, including for the clothing brand Benetton, is dead, reports the news agency APA. Toscani became one of the pioneers of so-called "shockvertising", shocking advertising. In a notable image for Benetton, he photographed a severely AIDS-sick person, surrounded by grieving relatives in a hospital.
In the late 1980s, he was accused of racism after a campaign that showed a black woman breastfeeding a white baby. In 2018, he caused a new controversy by using an image of migrants who had just been rescued from a sinking ship.
Toscani was afflicted with the disease amyloidosis and died in a hospital in the city of Cecina. He was 82 years old.
