Terry Richardson: misunderstood creative genius, dirty pervert or both?

[SympathysSilhouette]

^ She is an exception b/c her looks and personality are not desirable

She's just your typical product of a extremely privileged upbringing. I know the type, unfortunately.

[PinkCouture]

^ I figured based on the arrogant and obnoxious things she has said. I do give her credit for her creativity though. I love the show Girls but dislike her

[SympathysSilhouette]

I dislike her and hate Girls. I find it hard to separate the two. Girls is like a huge extension of her narcissism.

[katchitup]

I have actually never seen Girls (but I do hear good reviews for it, I'll have to rent sometimes despite what I'm about to say) but I am just SO SICK of her...I mean I get being confident with what you got, but theres a differance between being confident and cocky. Its so frowned upon when a skinny beautiful woman comments upon uglier/fatter folk, but the uglier fatter folk seem to be able to say whatever they want about skinny/beautiful women. Lena seems to bully and frown upon anybody who happens to be "skinny and beautiful". Girls like Lena speak that they should be treated beautiful too because who they are, yet all they do is take down other people, and create a cocky "I'm who I am so deal with it, other people should be more like me" attitude.

 

Its like a girl who claims they are a feminist but yet all they do is take down other woman for their choice in lifestyles

[PinkCouture]

.... Girls is like a huge extension of her narcissism.

 

 

I have actually never seen Girls (but I do hear good reviews for it, I'll have to rent sometimes despite what I'm about to say) but I am just SO SICK of her...I mean I get being confident with what you got, but theres a differance between being confident and cocky. Its so frowned upon when a skinny beautiful woman comments upon uglier/fatter folk, but the uglier fatter folk seem to be able to say whatever they want about skinny/beautiful women. Lena seems to bully and frown upon anybody who happens to be "skinny and beautiful". Girls like Lena speak that they should be treated beautiful too because who they are, yet all they do is take down other people, and create a cocky "I'm who I am so deal with it, other people should be more like me" attitude.

 

Its like a girl who claims they are a feminist but yet all they do is take down other woman for their choice in lifestyles

 

I agree, there is a huge difference between confidence and cockiness. I am inclined to suspect people who are insecure put up a cocky front as a defensive mechanism. She claims to be a "feminist" but her actions indicate otherwise. Your example of how she bashes attractive & skinny women illustrates my point perfectly. I also agree she is a bully, and a spoiled, closed-minded, pompous "mean girl"!

[Cult Icon]

New and improved photo with Eniko and Natasha:  Terry always inserts his ugly face for exposure, and this is my little revenge 

 

 

[PinkCouture]

Another Model Comes Forward With Horrible Terry Richardson Allegations
http://jezebel.com/another-model-comes-forward-with-horrible-terry-richard-1540412871

[SympathysSilhouette]

He's a massive creep and apparently also a sexual predator who is being enabled by the fashion industry...

[SympathysSilhouette]

It's about the huge discrepancy in life experience and power, and how he abuses it to get his way.

People who argue that these women could have just walked out at any point are missing the entire issue at hand here.

This kind of behavior is exactly why most work places have very strict sexual harassment rules, to make sure that those in positions of power and authority do not abuse them.

[PinkCouture]

^ THIS! (Y)

[2324lebron]

‘It’s a witch-hunt’: Controversial photographer Terry Richardson dismisses claims he acted inappropriately with models behind the scenes

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2580841/Its-witch-hunt-Controversial-photographer-Terry-Richardson-dismisses-claims-acted-inappropriately-models-scenes.html#ixzz2vwGMOkZS

 

[2324lebron]

Another Model Comes Forward With Horrible Terry Richardson Allegations

http://jezebel.com/another-model-comes-forward-with-horrible-terry-richard-1540412871

“Oh My God, What’s Happening?” Up Close and Personal With a Terry Richardson Model

READER DISCRETION STRONGLY ADVISED: 19-year-old art student Charlotte Waters was thrilled by the prospect of working with the notorious provocateur—until he groped her and defiled her face. She goes public in an exclusive interview

http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/sex/oh-god-whats-happening-close-personal-terry-richardson-model/

[2324lebron]

Terry Richardson slams sex misconduct ‘witch hunt’

http://pagesix.com/2014/03/13/terry-richardson-slams-claims-of-sex-misconduct-as-witch-hunt/?_ga=1.205672659.1371583437.1353288819

 

...Page Six has exclusively obtained a letter from Richardson defending himself

 

Four years ago, I chose to primarily ignore a cycle of Internet gossip and false accusations against me. At that time, I felt that to dignify them with a response was a betrayal of my work and my character. When these allegations resurfaced over the past few months, they seemed especially vicious and distorted, moving outside the realm of critical dialogue and becoming nothing more than an emotionally-charged witch hunt. Enabled and protected by the freewheeling and often times anonymous nature of the Internet, people have become comfortable concocting hate-filled and libelous tales about my professional and personal lives. In writing this, I make a humble attempt at correcting these rumors, because I have come to realize that absent my voice in the conversation, all that remain are the lies.

When I moved to New York in 1990 to take pictures, a lot of my work was a documentation of my life in the East Village; it was gritty, transgressive, and the aesthetic broke with the well-lit, polished fashion images of the time. My first big campaign, shot in 1994, was a provocative picture of a couple embracing in a bar. It was a shocking image for its time and the first instance a photograph of this nature was used in a major fashion advertisement.

Like Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, and so many others before me, sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography. Ten years ago, in 2004, I presented some of this work at a gallery show in New York City, accompanied by a book of the photos. The show was very popular and highly praised. The images depicted sexual situations and explored the beauty, rawness, and humor that sexuality entails. I collaborated with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work, and as is typical with any project, everyone signed releases. I have never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do. I give everyone that I work with enough respect to view them as having ownership of their free will and making their decisions accordingly, and as such, it has been difficult to see myself as a target of revisionist history. Sadly, in the on-going quest for controversy-generated page views, sloppy journalism fueled by sensationalized, malicious, and manipulative recountings of this work has given rise to angry Internet crusades. Well-intentioned or not, they are based on lies. Believing such rumors at face value does a disservice not only to the spirit of artistic endeavor, but most importantly, to the real victims of exploitation and abuse.

People will always have strong opinions about challenging images, and the dichotomy of sex is that it is both the most natural and universal of human behaviors and also one of the most sensitive and divisive. Over the course of my career, I have come to accept that some of my more provocative work courts controversy, and as an artist, I value the discourse that arises from this. I can only hope for this discourse to be informed by fact, so that whether you love my work or hate it, you give it, and me, the benefit of the truth.

[SympathysSilhouette]

Pretty interesting how similar his defense reads to that made by Woody Allen not too long ago.

[SympathysSilhouette]

http://www.styleite.com/features/a-horrifying-timeline-of-terry-richardson-allegations-from-trash-cans-to-tampon-tea/

[2324lebron]

It's about the huge discrepancy in life experience and power, and how he abuses it to get his way.

People who argue that these women could have just walked out at any point are missing the entire issue at hand here.

This kind of behavior is exactly why most work places have very strict sexual harassment rules, to make sure that those in positions of power and authority do not abuse them.

 

I think this is a grey area for me because I am not an expert at this sort of thing but I think it is obvious that Terry's studio isn't a conventional work place.  A couple of quotes from an article I found from March, 2010:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/03/17/fashions-biggest-pervert.html

 

 

Says one person who’s worked with Richardson: “It’s just impossible for me to see him as a sexual predator. What he does is completely out in the open.”

 

 

Adds another fashion world insider: “This is an industry filled with crazy people and big personalities. The boundaries are different than they are in a purely corporate enterprise. It’s not IBM, it’s a business with beautiful girls, sex, and malfeasance. To single out one person as some sort of ringleader is absurd. We traffic in women’s bodies.”

 

So I agree that he doesn't really try to hide what he is (numerous accounts on this) and the nature of his business is different.

Terry is an artist and that gives him a lot of freedom to push boundaries as long as the other party is consenting of course.  The latest model to come out, Charlotte Waters (the Reddit poster), also says she wasn't paid so Terry wasn't even holding money over her head.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1z5hu5/i_modeled_for_terry_richardson_when_i_was_19_ama/

(Last line of the long post)

 

It think that in Terry's side "job" as porno photographer his pleasure goes hand in hand with his business and while I might not think it's classy I don't find it morally reprehensible.   That is totally fine if models don't like what happened at Terry's studio and they want to educate others about it.  What I have an issue with is that since the beginning the implication from feminist bloggers has been that what Terry did was sexual harassment/sexual assault/a crime to now outright saying that and calling for his job. 

 

On that note I would like to refer to one of the original main complaints about Terry.  Before you dismiss this as just one incident in a line of many I think this is actually a large piece of the case against Terry and imo the main driving force of the current crusade against him.  That is Jamie Peck's article that was written 4 years ago yesterday.  On first read I was scandalized but on the second read I recognized the writer is cracking jokes throughout and I didn't really see performing a sex act on someone as being a fine line to cross.  Also from the second to last paragraph:

 

I was supposed to get a signed print as payment but I felt so gross about the whole thing that I never went back. A while later, someone told me my picture was in Purple. If you’re reading this, Terry, and want to prove you really are a nice guy after all, I’m over it now and wouldn’t mind collecting that print.

 http://www.thegloss.com/2010/03/16/fashion/terry-richardson-is-really-creepy-one-models-story/2/#ixzz2wEPg04l2

 

This strikes a very different tone from the one perpetuated by Jezebel and other bloggers who still use quotes from Miss Peck's article.  I could say a lot more on the individual models allegations but I don't think too many people are quite agreeing with the way they view their role in these incidents.

 

"Where there's smoke, there's fire but this is all steam or hot air if you like."

 

You can attribute that quote to Anonymous

[SympathysSilhouette]

Yeah, I'm not buying either of those justifications.

 

The fact that he does it "out in the open" does not disprove the fact that he might be a sexual predator.

The second justification is even more absurd, it basically boils down to the notion that since this is an industry that has a reputation of taking advantage of young women, any one man guilty of doing that is exempt from facing the consequences. The fashion industry does not find itself above the law, whether it would like to think so or not.

[2324lebron]

That fact that he is open about what he does gives women a chance to understand what kind of photographer he is and a chance to say no to him.  A good point brought up in Charlotte Waters' Reddit AMA was that the should have been a discussion about what Terry wanted to do before he did it.

 

My interpretation of second quote from the Daily Beast article wasn't so much about taking advantage of young women but the fact that the nature of the business is sexual and pushing boundaries is a part of this kind of "art".

 

"Above the law",  what law?  Terry didn't break any laws.  That's my main point, that this has been blown out of proportion.

From Charlotte Waters' Reddit AMA:

 

–]amaheygirlhey[S] 11 points

2 daysago

I've never claimed what he did was illegal. I'm just trying to shine some light on what actually occurs when an unknown girl/model walks through his door. I have filed a report because the more information they have the better if someone does come forward about an experience with him where the line from being taken advantage of to being illegal is crossed.

http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1zgtjb/my_experience_modeling_for_terry_richardson_when/cfxnawv?context=3

From her Vocative article

 

I called the NYPD, and they connected me with a detective, and I prefaced everything by saying that I was just calling because I wanted the information to be out there so that more people will come forward, and that I don’t want to press charges or anything. Then I told him the story, and all he said was that is wasn’t a crime situation because I never said no.

http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/sex/oh-god-whats-happening-close-personal-terry-richardson-model/

 

It's definitely not a sexual assault case.  Is it some sort of sexual harassment?  I would argue no but it's a grey area.  The only thing Terry really holds over these young models heads is that he is a major fashion photographer and a way to fame for them.  I don't think this is a very good excuse not to say no.  These girls' main excuse is being "paralyzed" or being on some sort of auto-pilot.  That's an entirely different debate.