Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Out of fashion23
Top magazines all ban celebrity photographer after sex abuse claims
NOTORIOUS fashion photographer Terry Richardson has been barred from working with top magazines – after being compared to disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Publisher Condé Nast, whose titles include Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ, emailed staff banning them from hiring the snapper who has been dogged by sex abuse claims from models for years.
The order also stated any pictures commissioned but not yet published must be “killed or substituted”.
Richardson has worked with the top names in music and fashion, including Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and models Kate Upton and Kate Moss.
He made the controversial 2013 Wrecking Ball video in which Cyrus, who later regretted it, was naked.
And, in a 2015 Vogue interview, fashionista Alexa Chung said Kate Upton had stood up to Richardson for releasing the Cat Daddy video of her dancing in a barely-there bikini, which has received 8.3million hits on his Vimeo video site.
Chung wrote: “Upton was horrified because the behind-the-scenes video had been filmed for fun, not something she expected would make the final cut.’
When asked about it, Kate said: “I was like, ‘That was disrespectful, you could have told me!’.”
Some of the sleazier accusations against former heroin addict Richardson is that he “strongly suggested” model Jamie Peck perform a sex act on him during a shoot when she was aged 19, “while his assistants cheered”.
She told how she fled “feeling like I needed two showers” in 2013.
Other controversial shoots include pictures of models performing a sex act on him or with the word “slut” on their forehead. Model Liskula Cohen walked out of one shoot and said: “He made me feel as if I was a prostitute, a whore.” On another occasion, a stylist accused the father-of-three of sexual assault in 2014, saying she had been invited to a shoot at his home and told to reveal her breasts.
No criminal charges have been filed against “Uncle Terry”, who has enjoyed long friendships with some models, including Kate Moss. He snapped her from the 90s to her wedding in 2011.
And his Condé Nast ban came after new British Vogue editor Edward Enninful was pictured arm-in-arm with him.
But at the weekend, a UK paper asked why the 52-year-old American was still “feted by fashionistas” in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse revelations. By April, 2015, high street brand H&M, Vogue and the New York Times were among several who had already reportedly stopped working with Richardson.
But after the weekend article, Condé Nast’s executive vice president James Woolhouse emailed executives globally to ensure none had him on their books.
Richardson said: “I collaborated with consenting adult women aware of the nature of the work, and everyone signed releases. I’ve never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something they did not want to do.”
Richardson’s Condé Nast ban came as a former assistant of Harvey Weinstein said she was paid £125,000 to keep quiet.
Zelda Perkins said she signed a nondisclosure agreement in 1998 after making the accusations. He asked her for massages and tried to pull her into bed, she said, but “was made to feel ashamed for disclosing his behaviour”.
Any shots not yet published must be killed or substituted JAMES WOOLHOUSE CONDÉ NAST EXECUTIVE