Warning: graphic details.
We already suspected it. But now the young models Terry Richardson photographs confirm it: the goggle-wearing nudographer is a fully blown creep.
Model Jamie Peck is quoted on
The Gloss as saying "Of all the fine folks I’ve frolicked
au naturel for, he’s the only one who’s left me feeling like I needed to take two showers."
Peck, who was 19 when Richardson shot her naked, recounts in graphic detail the shoot that made her feel decidedly creeped out by the photographer.
She says "he asked me to take my tampon out for him to play with." And "...I’m not sure how he maneuvered me over to the couch, but at some point he strongly suggested I touch his terrifying penis."
Supermodel Rie Rasmussen recently bailed him up at Paris Fashion Week. "I told him what you do is completely degrading to women. I hope you know you only [bleep] girls because you have a camera, lots of fashion contacts and get your pictures in Vogue," she said in the
New York Post.
Peck explained that she felt enormous pressure to do what Richardson asked. "I would never touch a creepy photographer’s penis. The only explanation I can come up with is that he was so darn friendly and happy about it all, and his assistants were so stoked on it as well, that I didn’t want to be the killjoy in the room. My new fake friends would’ve been bummed if I’d said no."
In contrast, Australian model Abbey Lee Kershaw said in The Times “Terry doesn’t force girls to do anything they don’t want to. He puts you in a G-string in a pile of mud because you want to do it. You touch yourself because you want to. For me, that shoot was the truth about how things were between us both, and I felt good doing it. I’m not ashamed of it — why should I be?”
Buried in Peck's account is the comment that "many of these things are not, in fact, very much fun for the girls." And that gets to the heart of the matter. Like Kershaw says, it's not about shame, it's about conditioning.
The explicit sexuality in Richardson's shoots and society in general is not fun for everyone. The mainstreaming of the porn aesthetic by photographers like Richardson and Purple's
Olivier Zahm condition us to think it is not just fun but normal.
Thing is, without the creep factor, Richardson's is just a one trick shooter with a built in flash and a backward attitude to women. Right now, the schtick is wearing as thin as a vintage flanny.