(Part 1)
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
– Obi-Wan, Star Wars (1977)
All Images by Terry Richardson, excluding this ones.
Frivolous.
Vain.
Materialistic.
Shallow.
Excessive.
Catty.
Racist.
Sexist.
Agist.
Pretentious.
Superficial.
Playful.
Diva.
Pimp.
Wierd.
Creepy.
Snub.
Junky.
Sleazy.
Exploitative.
Crazy.
Scandalous.
Dirty.
Stupid.
There are many adjectives we use to describe the fashion industry and those who make their living in it. Can you just imagine a child raised with this kind of adjectives? Wouldn’t he be as fucked-up as fashion photographer Bob Richardson‘s 45 yr old son? Have you seen Terry Richardson‘s Kibosh Book (now $195.75 @ amazon.com, 358 X-rated color images, published in 2005), dozens of shots showing Uncle Terry having a fun-day ejaculating over some top models faces (mouth, ears and eyes) while being photographed with a point and shoot camera? Not pornstars, but high-fashion agency models, the big question here is why those images don’t shock us anymore? Can fashion photographer Steven Klein, Mario Testino, Bruce Weber and other Vogue Magazine favorites like Terry get away shooting some fashion agency model with their very own sperm-facial, publishing it as a photo book and call it ‘HIGH FASHION ART’ for a couple of hundred dollars?
Money’s tight for everyone these days, and it doesn’t exclude the fashion élite, whether you’re wearing Chuck Taylors or Manolo Blahniks, everybody gets up in the morning and puts on some clothes, fashion is a vital part of who we are, whether we admit it or not. Fashion is a social and cultural expression or if we get carried away, could result to the maxed-out credit cards, and could also be a mindless distraction or escape from the ‘real problems’ of the world today.
Thinking about it, what made me fall in love with fashion photography for less than a decade now is actually the words — Teamwork, Creativity, Passion, and Genius, but these days are overshadowed by those aforementioned.
HIGH-FASHION SUICIDE
Do you believe that things happen for a reason?
- Is there a reason a legendary designer like Alexander Mcqueen hanged himself during recession? (hooray for metaphors)
- Is there a reason Anna Wintour (US Vogue editor) swallowed her pride and aggressively rubbing her wrinkled elbows with us commoners, becoming more and more media-friendly these days and sacrificing her image as an “Snub Ice-Queen”?
- Is there a reason the most iconic fashion giants and elites filed for bankruptcy this year like Christian Lacroix, Escada, Fred Leighton, Lambertson Truex, Charles Chang-Lima, Maria Pinto, Eric Gaskins, Yohji Yamamoto to name a few?
- Is there a reason the gods of fashion can’t afford Bryan Park for NY Fashion week anymore?
- Is there a reason 367 magazines closed in 2009, including significant numbers of fashion magazines and the ones that still exist are anorexic in pages and advertisements?
- Is there a reason thousands of fashion retail stores closed down in 2009 alone and more are predicted closing down their business in 2010?
Yes. The fashion world is now facing a reality check on things. The fashion gurus and magazine editors/writers might dismiss this as an economic phase and deny that they are not affected by the global shift of priorities, but the tell-tale signs listed above are evidences of a very dark-future for fashion – consumer’s priorities are becoming more and more realistic and it doesn’t include a $20,000 clutch bag and a $100,000 wedding dress. The fashion stratosphere cares more about diamond encrusted high heel shoes than the earthquake in Chile or Haiti, they care more about Project Runway than why the world’s no# 1 terrorist Osama Bin Laden is still at large and having an R&R in Pakistani cave somewhere, the fashion world is facing an earthquake and terror of its own – the fashion world’s inevitable demise.
UNCLE TERRY
You create a hyped up, overrated industry filled with morally challenged, below average IQ level over-achievers, sprinkle it with cattyness, bitchiness and diva-syndrome and viola, you’ll have a recipe for disaster that is waiting to happen, majority of fashion people are tailor fit for a BRAVO reality show, why? Because reality show stars have to be psychologically imbalanced to begin with and where can you find most people with a.d.d. and all this craziness? The FASHION INDUSTRY. Where they have theyre own government, they have their own queens, they have theyre own kings, and they have theyre own world with a set of rules or lack of rules they play within.
What’s polarizing the fashion blogosphere lately (and female blogosphere taken up arms against)? Two Words – Uncle Terry. One of fashion industry’s favorite son is under attack. Everyone’s seems to be cooperating on this wierd social experiment. But before we open our lips, let the man’s work speak for itself.
THE PERVERTED RINGLEADER
“I think for people in the fashion industry, the way Terry Richardson works has been an open secret for a long time, I think a lot of people tolerate it in public because of his extraordinary power within the industry. In private I think many are very disturbed by his history of behaviour with many of the models he works with.” - Jenna Sauers, Jezebel fashion editor
“It’s likely that he approaches all girls the same way: gauge the situation, drop some names, take out your trouser monster, and see what you can get them to do.” – Jamie Peck, model who posed for Richardson at 19
So the photographer who has made a career out of seeming like a pervert is actually a pervert? What a shocker! All of us have no idea that Terry Richardson fucks models. Who in the right mind would ever want to fuck a beautiful fashion agency model anyways? The fashion industry shows young girls with their tits and ass hanging out and now it’s a surprise that an actual photographer bangs them? It’s an industry filled with crazy people and big personalities. The boundaries are different than purely corporate enterprise. It’s not IBM, it’s a business with beautiful girls, sex, and malfeasance. To single out one person as some sort of ringleader is absurd. We traffic in human bodies. Human Meat.
UNCLE BRUCE WEBER
The world has become desensitized to Terry Richardson’s point of view, the Terryworld. Only in an industry like this that a successful, powerful fashion photographer will always be above scrutiny, and those against him are jealous haters. Some say he’s a Jurgen Teller, Walter Pfieffer, Dov Charney hack. Some say he’s an overpaid sex addict with a point and shoot while Uncle Terry is laughing all the way to the bank. The genius behind Terry Richardson: Normalizing sexual harassment in fashion and celebrity photography. Anna Wintour approved it, Carine Roitfeld approved it, Tom Ford approved it, Marc Jacobs approved it, countless fashion royalties approved it, even President Obama approved it with a handshake and a thumbs-up (Republican’s will feast on this), now how can it be wrong? It only make sense that the rest of us (the consumers) approve it. What about ‘Uncle’ Bruce Weber? Everybody in the industry knows about the big elephant in the room, it’s also an open-secret, all the sexual conquest of Bruce Weber (whose career spawned for 3 or 4 decades shooting hundreds of nekkid boys every year) are a favorite coffee break topic, why are you calling Uncle Terry the ring leader? This bring us to the true topic that this is not about Terry Richardson, or Uncle Terry, Rie Rasmussen, or Jamie Peck or Bruce Weber, it’s not about sex or sexual harrassment, it’s all about POWER, the person who can blacklist you from the Fashion Industry, the person with the most powerful connections, the person with their fingers hotwired in different buttons, the person who can afford a better lawyer will always triumph and dominate, exhibit A: The Vatican (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/world/europe/21pope.html)
GOVERNMENT APPROVED PERVERSION
Lets checkout Uncle Terry’s Client rosters: Gucci, Sisley, Miu Miu, Chloe, Tom Ford, French Vogue, British Vogue, i-D, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Purple, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Vincent Gallo, Jay Z, Kanye West, Johnny Knoxville, Karl Lagerfeld, Pharell Williams, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Moss, and President Obama. Uncle Terry admitted in a latest interview, “At first, I’d just want to do a few nude shots, so I’d take off my clothes, too … I’d even give the camera to the model and get her to shoot me for a while. It’s about creating a vibe, getting people relaxed and excited. When that happens you can do anything. I don’t think I’m a sex addict, but I do have issues. Maybe it’s the psychological thing that I was a shy kid, and now I’m this powerful guy with his boner, dominating all these girls”. Terry Richardson is a product of our societies demand for perversed and sexual images, he is a product or a mutated hybrid of capitalism. He brings us to that Terryworld whenever we look and buy his images or the products that his images are selling, we don’t only condone his perverted way of looking at things but we celebrate it, and we are shocked to know that there is a perverted man behind those perverted images? What are you expecting? a Mother Theresa or a Bill Gates would be behind those images? Or a clean-cut catholic priest? Oh sorry, they’re more perverted than an Uncle Terry (they don’t even work in Fashion for God’s sake they only rape 6-year-old boys and girls).
THE MODEL BOOKERS
Who did Terry frantically called (and maybe yelled at) the next day to complain when Supermodel Rie Rasmussen gave a furious tongue-lashing at a Paris fashion event, shaming the powerful photographer? Rie’s Model Agency. One thing is sure, Rie Rasmussen is toast, french toast.
When bloggers tried to reach Terry’s side of the story through his agent, manager and assistant, they didn’t return calls or e-mails. A rep at his agency, Art Partner, told New York Post: “I don’t know anything about this. Terry is on a plane from Paris.” Who are the guardians and so-called protectors of the models? THE MODEL BOOKERS, who would stop sending models to a photographer who’s clients ranges from Gucci, Sisley, Miu Miu, Chloe, Tom Ford, French Vogue, British Vogue, i-D, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar? It’s all business at the end of the day and they use the models to “exchange goods”, like corrupt cops who steals crack from a drug dealer, most of the time the defenders are the oppressors, the Model Bookers sometimes cant help but taste the meat first… literally (but that will be discussed more on THE MEAT MARKET Part 2: THE LIVES OF GAY MALE BOOKERS). For the rest of the world this could be a shocker, but for people like Ana Wintour (the proclaimed god of American Fashion), and all the fashion hipsters, Uncle Terry doesn’t shock them anymore, checkout the Terry Richardson: Kibosh Book ($195.75) and Uncle Terry having a fun-day ejaculating over the top models faces, and these are the models that agreed to be published, I could just imagine the countless girls that didn’t, but actually been shot the same way.
JEALOUS HATERS
At the end of the day, all this talk will lead to Uncle Terry’s day-rate tripling or date-rape tripling? Who wouldn’t be jealous of a Terry Richardson?
All this publicity is only increasing his notoriety and his vision which is Scandal. Frivolous. Vain. Materialistic. Shallow. Excessive. Catty. Racist. Sexist. Agist. Pretentious. Superficial. Playful. Diva. Pimp. Wierd. Creepy. Snub. Junky. Sleazy. Exploitative. Crazy. Scandalous. Dirty. Stupid.
Welcome to the World of Fashion, Who’s your ‘Uncle’ now?
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Related Entry: http://naiveboy.com/2009/11/12/i-want-to-have-sex-with-mr-tom-ford-by-navo/
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©2009 Dangerously Naive
©2009 Naiveboy.com
THE THREE CENSORED “WARRIORS”
Klein (self-portraits on the left), an american photographer based in New York is one of my personal heroes when it comes to pushing the envelope in the world of fashion, as a young photographer, I’m perplexed when Lady Gaga’s breast (as shown above) appeared in the same issue and it’s not censored since breasts have been fair game in fashion for a long time, and penis have popped-out here and there, and not in porn mags but in blue chip magazines and ad campaigns like “supermodels” Evandro Soldati (Ford NYC) and the latest Calvin Klein Model, Jamie Dornan‘s (Select London) full frontal nude (as shown below) for Visionaire #52 photographed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Andres Velencoso Segura (Wilhelmina NYC) by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for Arena Homme Plus magazine, Alex for Hercules Magazine photographed by Paola Kudacki, and martial arts star Samuel de Cubber in full glory with his legs apart and yes with his penis visible for Yves Saint Laurent men’s fragrance M7 “eight years ago” in 2002 created by the American designer Tom Ford. In an interview Ford said: “Perfume is worn on the skin, so why hide the body? The M7 campaign is really pure… it’s a very academic nude.”
James Dean
Mark Fisher
Greg Knudson
