New Born Baby ("Giusy")

Why it works

The photograph that forced advertising to ask what it is allowed to show. Oliviero Toscani's image of Giusy — a newborn seconds old, blood-smeared, umbilical cord uncut — carried nothing but Benetton's logo. Intended, in Benetton's words, as "an anthem to life," it drew 800 complaints to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority and was withdrawn in Britain, ordered down in Palermo, and censured by Italy's advertising jury — while simultaneously winning a Swiss poster prize, being requested by a Bologna maternity hospital for its delivery room, and entering the V&A's collection. It is studied as the central case of shock and sincerity in advertising: the campaign that detached a fashion brand's ads from its product entirely and made the billboard a site of public argument.