clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

More Stories of Terry Richardson's Sleaziness Surface

New, 5 comments

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Yesterday, Jezebel published an extensive post following up on recent allegations that Terry Richardson, the king of hipster fashion photography, takes advantage of his oft-naked young subjects. The blog culled together stories from fashion insiders and models who've worked with him, all of whom remained anonymous out of fear of Richardson's power within the industry. Ultimately, that's what makes this a big story. It's not that anyone is surprised Richardson molests his models—after all, the man has been running around with an "I molest models" mustache for years. It's that for the first time, people are speaking out about his behavior.

One model told Jezebel that Richardson had coerced her into going down on him on-camera; another describes being manhandled at a Richardson shoot at a Suicide Girls party when she was underage. Meanwhile, W magazine hasn't worked with him in years, perhaps because the art director took offense to a photo he did of a woman with her head in an oven.

Richardson has always presented the orgy atmosphere of his shots as a fun, voluntary thing, a crazy on-camera party where everybody just happened to decide to take their pants off. (Terryworld, his art book, has as many naked guys as girls, including Richardson himself.) But the past week has made it abundantly clear that plenty of his subjects felt like they didn't have the power to opt out of the party. Writes a Jezebel tipster, "Those people in power, the women, need to take their responsibility for what happens to the girls because by booking him, they are tacitly giving their approval that whatever he does is OK." Maybe they'll start now that these stories have come to light.
· Exclusive: More Models Come Forward With Allegations Against Fashion Photographer [Jezebel]
· Model Says Terry Richardson Is Kind of a Sleazeball [Racked NY]
· Terry Richardson Is Really Creepy: One Model's Story [The Gloss]