Photographer Terry Richardson has made a name for himself for carrying out sexually explicit photoshoots, working with some of the biggest models and magazines in the world.
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However, in light of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and a series of sexual exploitation allegations, the man who is considered to be the most depraved photographer in the fashion industry has been dropped by Conde Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ and Glamour.
In the past Richardson has worked with celebrities including Kate Moss, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Ivanka Trump, Beyonce and Miley Cyrus to name a few. There are currently no allegations with regards to sexual exploitation with any of these names.
However, other girls have made claims against the photographer and one studio insider said:
He makes Harvey Weinstein look like Bambi.
Everyone knew he chased sex with the models and he used to brag about it.
But nobody who looks like that gets so much consensual sex without abusing his power.
Like Weinstein, Richardson is increasingly looking like someone who has been abusing his power and has allegedly said that sex acts would boost the career of models. Although he has been taking photographs since the early 90s, it wasn’t until 2008 that rumours started to emerge about his lewd behaviour, with various models admitting to what it was like posing for him.
Anna del Gaizo described how she agreed to pose topless for Richardson but then he shocked her by thrusting his manhood against her face with “no warning whatsoever”.
He pressed it to my open mouth, giggling. He wanted a b*** j**, and he wanted it documented. I just knew I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
Another model, Charlotte Waters, was paying for art college by doing some nude work and she recalled how Richardson once licked her bare butt during a photo shoot and treated her like a “sex puppet”. Grim.
Meanwhile in a blog post another model, Jamie Peck, said she was asked to perform a sex act on the photographer, which she did while his assistants egged her on:
He spoke in the effeminate tones of someone trying very hard not to come off as sexually threatening despite the fact he was basically walking around in a hipster paedophile costume.
Model Sena Cech also said that Richardson’s assistant asked her to grab the photographer’s penis and twist it hard. Although Richardson tried to claim is was consensual, she said:
The experience was not consensual. It was revolting and humiliating.
And in 2011 a Skype conversation was published between Richardson and an unnamed 17-year-old model, where he becomes angry with the girl for refusing to have sex with him. He says:
Then you need to work at McDonald’s. This is the lifestyle.
Like Weinstein, Richardson argues that all of the sexual acts were “consensual”:
I collaborated with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work and as is typical . . . 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 such, it has been difficult to see myself as a target of revisionist history.
In 2002, Richardson admitted that a shoot got a “bit out of hand”:
The woman producing the shoot got freaked out and had to leave. I think every person there f***** someone. It was intense.
He also got in trouble for his books Kibosh and Terryworld as some of the women that featured in them complained that they were private photos.
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From the sound of these girl’s accounts (of which there are probably dozens more) and the fact that he’s been banished from working with some of the world’s largest magazines, it looks like the truth about his exploitation of women is finally becoming recognised.
