Terry Richardson denies allegations of sexual misconduct with models

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/14/terry-richardson-denies-sexual-misconduct-models

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Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson on Friday denied allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with models, making his first detailed comments on claims from numerous sources that began four years ago but have intensified in recent days.

In a letter published on the Huffington Post on Friday, Richardson portrayed his conduct during photographic shoots as consensual, but did not specifically deny that sexual activity had taken place.

“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,” Richardson said.

The letter comes days after Vocativ published an accusation from a woman who said Richardson made sexual advances while photographing her five years ago. Charlotte Waters, who said she was 19 when she posed for Richardson, gave a lurid and specific account of the incident to the website, which published another accusation by an anonymous model on Friday.

Richardson has been accused on many occasions of making sexual advances to young models. Rie Rasmussen, a Danish model, confronted Richardson at a Paris event and accused him of exploiting young models in vulnerable positions.

“He takes girls who are young, manipulates them to take their clothes off and takes pictures of them they will be ashamed of. They are too afraid to say no because their agency booked them on the job and are too young to stand up for themselves,” she told the New York Post.

In his Huffington Post article, Richardson said the accusations were lies. “In writing this, I make a humble attempt at correcting these rumors, because I have come to realize that absent my voice in the conversation, all that remain are the lies,” Richardson said.

In his photographs, Richardson often features naked or nearly naked young women, sometimes simulating sexual acts. Richardson occasionally appears naked in the frame. His resumé includes shooting covers for Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and GQ. Jared Leto, Miley Cyrus and Lea Michele have recently modeled for him, and he directed Cyrus’s controversial Wrecking Ball video.

Richardson begins the letter by explaining why he has not responded to the “false accusations” of sexual harassment at his photo shoots since they first started being made publicly four years ago:

At that time, I felt that to dignify them with a response was a betrayal of my work and my character. When these allegations resurfaced over the past few months, they seemed especially vicious and distorted, moving outside the realm of critical dialogue and becoming nothing more than an emotionally-charged witch hunt. Enabled and protected by the freewheeling and often times anonymous nature of the Internet, people have become comfortable concocting hate-filled and libelous tales about my professional and personal lives.

In the letter, Richardson compares himself to Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton, arguing that “sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography”.

“Over the course of my career, I have come to accept that some of my more provocative work courts controversy, and as an artist, I value the discourse that arises from this,” Richardson said. “I can only hope for this discourse to be informed by fact, so that whether you love my work or hate it, you give it, and me, the benefit of the truth.