Photographer Oliviero Toscani, best known for his provocative ad campaigns for Benetton, is causing scandal once again with his 2012 calendar for a leather-tanning consortium showing close-ups of 12 penises. Last year Toscani's calendar for the consortium near Pisa featured women's pubic areas, sparking protests.
Toscani's entourage said Thursday he would unveil the new calendar at Florence's anthropology museum on January 12 with pornstar Rocco Siffredi in attendance, but they refused to say who had posed for the calendar.
Past controversial Toscani pics have included a nun kissing a priest; a man dying from AIDS; an unwashed newborn baby with an umbilical cord attached; a bullet-ridden Bosnian war flak-jacket: a man slain by the Mafia lying in a pool of blood; gay men in affectionate poses; and an emaciated model who later died of anorexia.
His work for Benetton's ‘United Colors' publicity campaign also included attacks on racism, notably one with three almost identical human hearts, which were actually pig hearts, with the words ‘white', ‘black', and ‘yellow' as captions.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
