Benetton

With the polarizing Benetton posters he produced from 1983 to 2000, Oliviero Toscani (b. 1942) proved that even in commercial advertising a new pictorial rhetoric can still grab attention. The posters illustrate Toscani’s increasing radicalization. While the early works convey benign multicultural messages, beginning in 1993 the campaign is dominated by eye-catching reportage photos of global political events. A necessary appeal to people’s moral conscience, or a misuse of suffering?