Oliverio Toscani (Portrait/Advertising)

Oliverio Toscani born in 1942 in Milan, Italy. Toscani wanted to take up photography because he wanted to follow in his fathers foot steps Fedele Toscani who used to be a photoreporter for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. After Toscani gained his diploma at Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich he went onto working with several magazines including, Elle, Vogue, L'Uomo and Harpers Bazaar. In 1982 he started working for Benetton where some of his campaign work made controversy across the globe. In the early 1990's he co founded the magazine Colors with the company Benneton. He carried on working for Benneton until 2000. Once again in 2005 Toscani caused controversy with campaign ads with men's clothing brand Ra-Re which shows men engaging in homosexual behaviour and then again in 2007 a campaign on anorexia which has controversial because of the shocking photography of an emaciated women (Isabella Caro).

This was Oliverio Toscani first controversial image and it was of David Kirby on his deathbed dying of AIDS. The image was used in Life magazine as a campaign to prevent AIDS and the Kirby family gave permission for Life magazine to use it. You can tell why it was controversial because it isn't a very nice image, but it sends across a message to everyone to prevent people form spreading the horrible disease around. The lighting in the hospital will just be natural lighting because they wouldn't of set anything up because the family would of wanted some privacy. All the family is obviously grieving the loss of a family member but each member of the family has a different facial expression the father of David Kirby looks distraught in that he is about to lose his son, but then his mother looks like she is trying to ignore what is going on around her so that then she doesn't have to deal with it and then his sister look like she doesn't have a clue what is going and has a sense of shock on her face. The main subject is David Kirby because he is the one that is dying but then there is the other subject of the family grieving. Toscani who took the picture would have had to be standing a bit of distance away to give the family space that they need so he would have had to use zoom to see the expressions of the family.