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Also Today Live from death row When Benetton used convicted killers to model in its ad campaign, it cost more than the firm bargained for. By Craig Offman

It is hard not to be charmed by Toscani, though it is easy to see why many people are not. Labeled by many the "bad boy of advertising," he is opinionated, irreverent, sometimes bombastic and often contradictory. I, for one, was never particularly moved by Toscani's work for Benetton -- the multicolored condoms, the horses mating, the newborn babies -- until the early '90s, when a campaign featured dying AIDS patient David Kirby.

Kirby's completely ravaged, emaciated body surrounded by hefty, fleshy, grieving relatives was almost medieval in its pathos, and yet it had the slightly stiff, theatrical quality of figures in a wax museum. (Which is why, at first glance, I wasn't sure if the image was even real.) Once I noticed Benetton's little green rectangular logo floating discreetly on the bottom of the billboard, I thought, Oh, this is advertising. Or is it? What exactly is Benetton doing here? Selling knitwear? Is Toscani waging a social crusade or has he simply found the perfect shock-value advertising strategy to bolster Benetton's corporate brand identity? Is he exploiting the sick and the dying or is he legitimately increasing public awareness of critical social issues?

These questions have underscored all of Toscani's subsequent campaigns, inciting fresh outrage along the way. And there is no one simple answer. For every person who detests Toscani there is another who admires his work.

"Toscani is on another planet. I think his work is sick and unhealthy," says Dominique Anginot, a photographer and president of Lux Modernis, a French advertising company. "I understand the combat he's leading here with these types of images, and I appreciate his iconoclasm, but what's sick here is marrying these high-impact social images with futile consumer products, like sweaters. It's disrespectful of the public. Joel Peter Witkin (another famous photographer) does extremely disturbing photos of images made with cadavers and body parts, but he's not defending any moral or mercantile code. Toscani is doing both, and that's dishonest."

Others are not so dismissive. Many have applauded (and awarded) Toscani's work and do not see a contradiction in mixing social activism or commentary with advertising. In an industry where selling your soul to peddle product is par for the course, Toscani has had the good fortune of being able to communicate in ways unthinkable to a traditional multinational corporation. (Could we imagine, for example, Procter & Gamble using starving African babies in its Pampers advertising?)

Thanks to Benetton's owner, Luciano Benetton, Toscani (who is a photographer, not an advertising executive) was given carte blanche to use the company's advertising platform as his canvas. And since Toscani is concerned that we are moving farther and perilously away from reality, it is no surprise that reality features prominently, if not exclusively, in his work. Human heart, war, the bloodstained shirt of a dead Slavic soldier -- Toscani presents life with no holds barred.

His magazine, Colors, which is published in seven editions and eight languages, is essentially a compendium of hardcore, in-your-face reality with no advertising and little if any commentary -- just the stark reality of a world many of us do not want to acknowledge, let alone live in.

Curiously, the more Toscani's work has strayed from the product being sold and assaulted us with reality, the more controversy it has stirred up. Toscani is seemingly indifferent to all this, particularly when it comes to his detractors. "I don't care about rejection," he says. "Actually, it's a big honor."

If this is true, then Toscani is basking in the glory of his latest controversy, which has elicited widespread and aggressive rejection: Twenty-six-year-old death-row inmate Jeremy Sheets stares out from billboards with a look both placid and disturbing. His impending execution might have gone unnoticed were it not for Toscani, who has immortalized Sheets and several other death-row inmates in his latest Benetton campaign. Among other things, the campaign has resulted in complex legal battles and the loss of Sears as a Benetton client. "Pft," says Toscani about the latter, waving his hand dismissively. At one moment he seems fashionably apathetic; at other times he passionately defends the issues at stake in his campaigns.

After spending time with Toscani, my impression is that he is very comfortable with the seeming contradictions in his nature; as far as provocation is concerned, it has always been part of his palette. In the late '60s and '70s he was hanging out with Andy Warhol. He has worked for and/or remains friends with people who have married commercial fortune with social activism, including Doug Tompkins, the co-founder of Esprit, who sold his fashion empire to create a vast self-sustaining "eco-retreat" in Chile to save the rain forests. Nearly 20 years ago his work for Jesus Jeans (notably an ad of his then girlfriend sticking her butt in the camera) prompted important Italian social critics to write prolifically about Toscani and his position on sex, advertising and the Roman Catholic Church. Given Toscani's personal orientation and nature, one can only imagine that if he hadn't met Mr. Benetton, he would have invented him.

But all this doesn't explain why so many people are so concerned about Toscani's work. His mixing of problematic social issues with advertising may be in deeply questionable taste, but does that mean that we should prefer the warm-and-fuzzy advertising of seriously scary multinationals like, say, Monsanto?

In the end, Toscani's work may be a form of cynicism, or it may be a vehicle for stirring up debate around social issues. Or it may be both. Lillian Hellman once said: "Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth." Toscani would most likely agree.

Next page | Toscani in his own words