Oliviero Toscani Quotes

#1. I was an English major in college, though I ended up getting my degree in "General Stduies" because my grades were too bad to qualify for an English degree.

Josh Lieb

#2. When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.

Frank Herbert

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

Oliviero Toscani

#4. 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

#5. 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.

Oliviero Toscani

#6. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself.

Dee Brown

#7. 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.

Oliviero Toscani

#8. 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

#9. 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.

Oliviero Toscani

#10. 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.

Oliviero Toscani

#11. 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.

Oliviero Toscani

#12. How were you supposed to feel when you adored the novels of Jules Verne, Maupassant, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Simenon and loads of others who then turned out to be complete bastards?

Jean-Michel Guenassia

#13. 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 ...

Oliviero Toscani

#14. 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.

Oliviero Toscani

#15. Belief is a pretty fragile thing, which is probably why most people guard it so carefully.

David McRaney

#16. 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.'

Oliviero Toscani

#17. 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.

Oliviero Toscani

#18. Being general manager is like being the de facto owner. It's like wearing the crown of 'Restaurant Man' without being 'Restaurant Man.' You're trying to run the business, but you're running the ranch without riding the big horse.

Joe Bastianich