Monday, September 21, 2009

Oliviero Toscani



"Globalism is a blessing. Proclaiming that McDonalds is bad and should be banned is like saying you're against photography because you've seen an ugly picture somewhere. You know what you should do? Take a better picture. That is revolution-not screaming on the street." - Oliviero Toscani

"Some people look at a picture for thirty seconds, some for years. It doesn't really matter because a picture is like life. You take out of life as much as you are able to take out of life, just as you take out of a picture as much as you can take out of a picture... "- Oliver Toscani
"We become very impressed when we get to look inside ourselves, into pictures. That's the relationship we have with pictures. Every picture is a piece of the inside of ourselves." - Oliviero Toscani
"A man can watch half an hour of television and think that he's seen a civil war in Africa, the disappearing rain forests in the Amazon and genocide in Bosnia. In truth, he hasn't seen a thing. In truth, he was seated in his armchair and saw images that were presented, accelerated, slowed down and mediated by someone else. You can't learn anything passively. (...) What about still images? Can't they be just as manipulative? No, because they work at a subjective rhythm. You react to a photograph according to your own tempo. A photograph permits a first viewing, and then an individual reflection. It solicits participation, and encourages individuality in interpretation. Television is an autarchy, a dictatorship." - Oliviero Toscani - interview with Benetton pr-manager Oliviero Toscani; Newsweek, June 13, 1994