Oliviero Toscani Quotes

I want a better world, but also a realistic world. We can only create a better world by becoming realistic.

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.

Advertising agencies don't care about a better world in the end. They are servants of their client: what the client wants is what they get. Their only problem is to not lose the budget. I think its a shame because advertising is so boring and it can be so interesting. They should ask more artists to make interesting campaigns.

Pictures put you in front of a reality that most of the times you don't want to see, don't want to know about, don't want to get involved.

Communication, that's what I do. Advertising is the best way to communicate because you reach a lot of people. I still cant understand though, why people are shocked by something that obviously exists. Its like a family that avoids talking about its real problems.

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.

No matter what. I like to be different. Its not easy to work the way we want, because we have to deal with a lot of judgmental people, but we've always been in that position, so its nothing we cannot handle.

Women from fashion magazines, they hate other women. They like to tell other women they are ugly and often it works. Women's magazines are mostly about the outside and not about the inside. About make-up instead of arts and literature. Its such a shame.

I did extensive research on media and anorexia and found out that the fashion magazines are to blame in a way. They project an image of a woman that is completely absurd, but girls and women believe they should be very skinny. They don't look like real woman anymore.

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.

Communication has always been at the service of power. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel for the Pope. Is it not an advertisement for the Church? I try to make the best pictures I can and sometimes they are used in advertising campaigns.

I'm a photographer and my pictures are used in advertising campaigns. But I don't do advertising. Do you hear me? I take pictures. I'm not an advertising agency. I'm not an advertising man.

You ask me about my ex-wife? That is not polite. But I will answer. I got another wife now. Much younger, much nicer, much prettier. And so much more intelligent than Benetton.'