Oh, why couldn’t the world’s greatest Kate Upton GIF have come from anyone but HIM? After the millionth distressing tell-all from a model about Terry Richardson’s general perviness was published earlier this week, all of which come to the same conclusion (Terry’s favorite Radiohead song? “Creep”), the cocaine-photographer tried to explain himself on Huffington Post. It’s a match made in Distasteful Heaven: the only people who make me more uncomfortable than Richardson are HuffPo commenters.
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. (Via)
tl;dr: “I’M A GREAT ARTIST NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME.” Rather than confront the rumors directly, Richardson deflects all blame and uses “art” as an excuse to do whatever he wants, because he’s an artist and artists push boundaries (and pull off a model’s pants, apparently).
Why can’t a performance artist puke on him instead?