Oliviero Toscani

Oliviero Toscani is a great inspiration of mine, his photography captures life at it's most distressing in what I consider to be a most artful, and dare I say it beautiful manner, he's raised so many contentious issues occurring in modern society with his use of photography, from Aids to Anorexia and from birth to religion, here are a couple of my favourites: 

it may be an image that is so overused in a world obsessed with the effect of so called "skinny models" on young people and their perception of body image, but Toscani's shot of Isabelle Caro (who died as a result of her anorexia last year) does exactly what Caro herself intended, to show that "Thinness generates death. it is everything but beautiful."  



in November, 1990, LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man, David Kirby -- his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world -- surrounded by anguished family members as he took his last breaths. 

In his own words: "there are no shocking pictures, only shocking reality."