OLIVIERO TOSCANI
i n c re d i b l e e n e m ies, f a nta stic o ppo r tunities
ANDREA BLANCH: It's so nice to speak to you after all these years! The issue that I'm working on now con-
cerns the concept of “risk” - I thought that you might be able to relate to that with your advertising work.
OLIVIERO TOSCANI: I don't do advertising, I just do advertising media. If I worked for a newspaper or
magazine it would be published just in that magazine. I don't really know advertising.
ANDREA: Your father was a photojournalist, and that must have had a tremendous influence on you
and your work - for me your work is photojournalistic. I'm wondering why you decided to address the
problems of humanity.
OLIVIERO: I've always been engaged somehow. I belong to a generation that revolted in the early 60s. I'm
the same age as Bob Dylan and Mohammed Ali and the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I've been out there.
ANDREA: Well, you've said recently that you feel sensitivities have changed since you stopped work-
ing with Benetton in 2000.
OLIVIERO: I wanted to try something new and now I'm back again.
ANDREA: And you had said the reason you’re back [with Benetton] was because you have similar
interests. Would you care to expand on that? What interests do you have in common?
OLIVIERO: What interests me right now is the problem of integration. This is a major problem of the
world today. We can’t integrate humanity.
ANDREA: Considering the generation in which you grew up, how do you think that the work you’ve
done with Benetton is going to affect what you can do now?
OLIVIERO: Well, we are living in a moment that is not really correct for humanity; look at your president.
ANDREA: Oh, please, I don't want to.
OLIVIERO: We have to do something. It's fantastic to have this chance, and, of course, in Italy, we've
got the same kind of model and the same kind of idiots. So I'm resisting.
ANDREA: And how are you going to show that?
OLIVIERO: I do everything I can through the press, through interviews, through what is published,
and through what is going public on TV.
Portrait by artist to come. Following spread: 1991.
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