Richardson has denied the allegations of misconduct. But based on these and other interviews with sources close to Richardson, including agency employees, magazine staffers, stylists, and models, a portrait of the photographer's tactics for getting young women to submit to his advances is emerging. And it is not pretty.
Said one source familiar with the environment in Richardson's downtown New York studio, where Richardson, studio manager Seth Goldfarb, and first assistant David Swanson run the show, "The way those guys talk, women are whores and sluts, whores and sluts." Richardson is smart enough to police his behavior when circumstances dictate restraint. "The truly inappropriate stuff only happens when Terry shoots in his home studio, or on location," says this insider. "When he shoots at Milk or Industria" — two large professional studios in New York — "there are too many outsiders with prying eyes."
And Richardson would never "strongly suggest" that one of the celebrities he shoots ought to get him off. "He never, never, ever acts like this in front of any celebrity, from A-list to Z-list, even the craziest, most drugged up, want-to-please Terry types." Celebrities come surrounded by handlers and friends and publicists, and celebrities have both the power and the means to seek redress should anything happen to them on set.
This reality echoes in a strange way the sentiments of Marc Jacobs, who discussed Richardson earlier this week at an event in New York. Jacobs, who has shot with Richardson several times, said he always felt free to refuse when one of his ideas for a shot was too extreme. "I've worked with Terry and Terry has asked me to do some crazy things," said the designer. "I know that those pictures will exist if I do them. But I'm a big boy and I can say no."
With models — especially young, un-agented models, like Peck, or those Richardson solicits via his website — it's a different story. "His M.O. is to suddenly get his dick out during the shoot," says an industry insider — just as Peck and the other models described. Richardson does this so frequently, this source compares it to a rehearsed drama: "It's like you're at the part in the play where that character comes out." And Richardson proceeds from nudity, to touching himself, to touching the model, to asking the model to touch him — all more on the assumption of his subject's consent than her actual, asked and obtained, permission.
All of which begs the question, who is in the business of protecting models from whatever predators exist within the industry? Theoretically, this would be the agency to which the model pays, in New York, a 20% share of her earnings, in exchange for management and support. I invited a variety of contacts at top New York agencies to speak to me about their respective policies and practices for keeping their models — particularly their underaged models — safe at work. I received mostly email silence and unreturned phonecalls.
Two former agency employees told me, on condition of anonymity, that the agencies they had worked for, in the words of one, "didn't send [Richardson] the young girls, knowing full well his predatory behavior." But other sources at those same agencies denied any such de facto policy, and I'm personally aware of several models who were well under 18 — one was just 14 — and represented by agencies like Next and IMG, who were sent on castings and jobs with Richardson. (Richardson's most recent work featuring models under the age of 18 is his fall, 2009, Lacoste campaign, which featured the minors Karlie Kloss and Heidi Rock, who were then 16, and Selina Khan. Richardson also shot an editorial with Kloss for the November, 2008, issue of British Vogue; Kloss turned 16 in August of 2008.) Marc Jacobs, speaking at the same event, had some suggestions for keeping models safe in the industry himself: "If a girl is underage, maybe the girl's agent or chaperon should be present on the shoot. That's the hard part. Who's to blame or who's to watch?"
None of the former and current agency employees I talked to said that their companies had policies on sexual harassment for their models, because models are independent contractors. Modeling isn't the kind of job where you can report unlawful conduct to H.R.
- but in this case they should shut up.
I can't appreciate anything of his "good" (H&M) works because of his "bad" works (Purple Magazine). Prison for him if its true!!
