Finally, a model has spoken out about how Terry Richardson treats his model subjects - by pulling out his penis and seeing how far he can get them to go. It's quite unbelieveable that he's still going on with this whole trip, that he shot the Pirelli calendar for this year, and that we've seen every famous face bow to his camera lens. It makes you wonder how many models/actresses he's slept with on the job.
Jamie Peck, who was 19 at the time, recounts her story.
"This man has built his business/pleasure empire on breaking the cardinal rule of asking a young girl you don't know to come over to your house and hang out naked: don't be a fucking creep."
The first time he shot with her, he was perfectly nice and even made her tea, "though he spoke in the effeminate tones of someone trying very hard not to come off as sexually threatening despite the fact that he was basically walking around in a hipster pedophile costume."
It was the second time that things got freaking weird.
"I told him I had my period so I wanted to keep my underwear on, and he asked me to take my tampon out for him to play with. "I love tampons!" he said, in that psychotically upbeat way that temporarily convinces so many girls that what's fun for Uncle Terry is fun for them. (I can just imagine him chirping, "Why don't you wear these fairy wings while I fuck you in the ass? Wouldn't that be like, so fun?" to some attenuated girl fresh off the boat from Eastern Europe. Either the man's totally delusional, or he gets off on the fact that many of these things are not, in fact, very much fun for the girls.) I politely declined his offer to make tea out of my bloody cunt plug. It was then that he decided to just get naked.
Before I could say "whoa, whoa, whoa!" dude was wearing only his tattoos and waggling the biggest dick I'd ever seen dangerously close to my unclothed person (granted, I hadn't seen very many yet). "Why don't you take some pictures of me?" he asked. Um, sure.
I’m not sure how he maneuvered me over to the couch, but at some point he strongly suggested I touch his terrifying penis.
This is where I zoom out on the situation. I can remember doing this stuff, but even at the time, it was sort of like watching someone else do it, someone who couldn’t possibly be me because I would never touch a creepy photographer’s penis. The only explanation I can come up with is that he was so darn friendly and happy about it all, and his assistants were so stoked on it as well, that I didn’t want to be the killjoy in the room. My new fake friends would’ve been bummed if I’d said no.
I must have said something about finals, because he told me, “if you make me come, you get an A.” So I did! Pretty fast, I might add. All over my left hand. His assistant handed me a towel.
I was supposed to get a signed print as payment but I felt so gross about the whole thing that I never went back. A while later, someone told me my picture was in Purple. If you’re reading this, Terry, and want to prove you really are a nice guy after all, I’m over it now and wouldn’t mind collecting that print.
As much as I’d like to think he went especially mad for my unique brand of non-emaciated sex appeal, 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. I don’t doubt that some of the girls who pose for/starfuck him really do have fun; I’m not going to tell another person how she should or shouldn’t get her kicks. But it’s not my personal cup of period tea. Or, I’d venture to guess, that of many others who’ve crossed paths with fashion’s sacred perv."
Okay, can we talk about this? I'm totally scarred. I knew something was obviously up, I had heard rumour of beds in studios and models in back rooms. But the fact that he asked a model to give him a hand job in front of his assistants is just repulsive. I'm never going to look at another Terry Richardson shot in the same way again. Gross.


Shots: Terry Richardson with Kate Moss (top), Natalia Vodianova (above) and Vanessa Paradis (bottom) from Terry's website terryrichardsondiary.com