Focus

by Michael Gross

  Like his East Village milieu, he wrote, his work “was gritty, transgressive,” and “shocking,” a far cry from “the well-lit, polished fashion images of the time.” He claimed such work had never before been seen, but then compared himself to the photographers Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton. He felt his work “explored the beauty, rawness, and humor that sexuality entails” and was produced in collaboration “with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work, and as is typical with any project, everyone signed releases.” He insisted he never traded work for sexual favors, always respected his models, and implied that some of them had the equivalent of morning-after regrets, resulting in “revisionist history” that fed “the on-going quest for controversy-generated page views,” and “sloppy journalism” that did “a disservice not only to the spirit of artistic endeavor, but most importantly, to the real victims of exploitation and abuse.

  “People will always have strong opinions about challenging images, and the dichotomy of sex is that it is both the most natural and universal of human behaviors and also one of the most sensitive and divisive,” he ended. “I value the discourse that arises from this. 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.” Presumably, he meant the benefit of the doubt.

  He didn’t get it from everyone. A Vogue spokesman announced the magazine had no plans “to work with him in the future.” That he was under contract to American Vogue’s bitter rival, Bazaar, likely assuaged any sense of loss at Vogue. But Richardson must have felt a loss over the near-simultaneous defections of several clients, including H&M and Target.

  He hired a powerful entertainment-business public relations firm with a specialty in reputational damage control. One of its managing directors was present at his 2012 interview with Styles of the Times. Though he’d spurned most other requests for interviews (including for this book), the firm then arranged for him to pose and be interviewed for a cover story in New York magazine. A day after Jezebel revealed that that story was in the works, another woman, a writer and stylist identified only as Anna, came forward to say that in 2008 she’d been lured to a shoot at Richardson’s studio, where she ended up crawling on the floor while Richardson jabbed himself “into my face.” Styleite concluded its recounting of these Richardson outrages with the hope that fewer celebrities would pose for him and more magazines would realize “his simple flash setup really isn’t worth the day rate.”

  Terry was on the June 16, 2014, cover of New York, advertising a story somewhat less pointed than the headline that accompanied it: “Is Terry Richardson an Artist or a Predator?” Despite his PR firm’s feeling that it was positive for him, it set off another round of criticism of its misrepresentations and omissions. So there was no victory lap for Richardson. He was as notably absent from fashion during the rest of 2014 as he’d been omnipresent the year before. Styleite’s wish seemed to be coming true.

  When Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” won Video of the Year at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, the music star decided against giving an acceptance speech, which would have required she thank her director. Instead, she sat silently beside the stage while a young man accepted her award for her and gave a brief speech about homeless youth. Richardson did not attend and did not win the award for Best Direction, either, which went to a relatively forgettable hip-hop video. Cyrus’s “team knew” she couldn’t thank him, says someone quite close to Richardson, “so they had to do something else.”

  Though Harper’s Bazaar would still be publishing Richardson in March 2016, his highest-profile remaining magazine outlet wasn’t saying if it had renewed his contract. Executives at Bazaar and its owner, the Hearst Corporation, didn’t respond to a question about their intentions.

  By the end of 2014, Terry’s Diary—his face to the world—was looking more like a Home for Old Celebrities than the home of the hottest fashion lens on the planet. At the end of the year, the only A-list star whose picture was posted there was Jared Leto. Otherwise, the cast of characters was a motley crew of past-their-prime-time players and B-listers: Chuck Zito, Mason Reese, and Tony Orlando.

  The King of Selfies seemed reduced to a panhandler at the door of the party. And the only nude or seminude women on the site—long among its prime attractions—were on billboards for sex clubs (signage has long been a Richardson photographic sideline) and a reproduced spread from a Brazilian nudie magazine.

  Late in 2015, Miley Cyrus would return for a sexually charged, all-nude shoot for Candy magazine. That just didn’t shock anymore.

  For most fashion photographers, their peak of creativity lasts seven to ten years. Then, they either quit or start repeating themselves. Terry Richardson’s fame had hit not only that limit but also another he imposed on himself with his—to be kind—gritty, transgressive behavior.

  Fashion doesn’t look back; it moves on. So it had already gone looking for the next Terry Richardson and found at least one photographer whose work resembled his, but without the ick factor that finally overwhelmed the novelty and, yes, it needs to be said, honesty of his pre-2013 work. She was a UCLA graduate named Hadley Hudson, whom some art directors call “the female Terry Richardson,” thanks mostly to her raw flash-lit, documentary-style photographs of models and style icons in their own clothes and their own homes.

  “The dream has changed,” says Jeff Poe, co-owner of the Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles, for whom Hudson worked as a student. “Fashion photography has been, historically, about seduction and yet, removal. The way Hadley does it, it’s almost attainable. It’s doing what you want to do, and that’s what Hadley represents. Terry Richardson was doing that, too, with his simple flash and his immediacy. She does it in a female way that retains a respect for the subject. Terry has to be the subject, and by doing that, it became about him and not the fashion. That’s the problem with the whole world now. Everybody wants to be a fucking star. It’s become egalitarian. Hadley foresaw the ubiquity of the image and became part of the change.”

  On a Sunday afternoon in fall 2014, Hudson was in East Williamsburg, near the Brooklyn-Queens border, shooting a model in a raw loft space for Vice, the same influential youth cult magazine that championed Terry Richardson’s early work.

  To choose her latest subject, Hudson had held a go-see at a Manhattan modeling agency. A series of young male and female models paraded through a small white room with a white leather sofa, each proffering tablet computers full of sample photographs or, in a few cases, old-fashioned physical portfolios. They ran the gamut of experience. “A lot of them live with their parents,” Hudson says. “I look for people with their own place.”

  Toward the end of the hour, a model named Rain walked in. Tall and well built, broad shouldered but boyish, short haired and wearing a yellow jacket and a newsboy cap, Rain removed a jacket, revealing large womanly breasts, and explained that she modeled both as a man and a woman. She told Hudson she lived in an old industrial building that’d been converted into artists’ lofts. “Everyone drinks pretentious coffee, eats organic food, and wears H&M,” she said. She was nonmonogamous, dated both men and women, performed live as a monologist, and was then on a cable TV show called Living Different, about women who defy stereotypes. She was the show’s androgyne. It paid the bills, she said.

  Hudson flipped through Rain’s book, pausing at a shot of her in underwear. The photographer who had taken it told her, “I want to shoot you as a gay boy,” Rain said.

  Hudson was intrigued—and a few days later, their shoot began with some of that pretentious coffee and a long, seemingly aimless conversation at Rain’s dining room table designed to put the model at ease and give Hudson insight into her character. “This industry really does send a weird message,” Rain said, “that you can afford the things we’re wearing.”

  Hudson probed Rain’s bio and learned that she came from Vermont, had grown up on a farm, and moved to Colorado, where she
had worked as a smoke jumper, fighting fires, and found she could pass as male. “A classic model story,” she joked. Then, she earned a degree in genetic engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, where, at a football game, she met a model who said she could be one, too. When Rain demurred, saying models were pretentious and didn’t eat, the model offered a bet on the game; if Rain lost, she’d have to go to a casting for a Calvin Klein underwear show.

  “They thought I was a dude,” Rain told Hudson, until she was asked to take off her shirt. Rain laughed. “I let them deal with my enlarged pecs.” She was hired to walk in the show—albeit wearing a shirt. “I identify as nongender.”

  “What does that mean?” Hudson asked.

  “I let people figure it out for themselves. Some people think I’m transitioning, some think I’m a lesbian, some think I’m straight and very high fashion. I’d sure as shit be a dude to get a job, but when the Titanic starts sinking? Dude, women and children first!”

  Though she’d appeared in Chanel campaigns, Rain prefered H&M. “Soon, people won’t care anymore. Just buy what’s cheap and looks good.”

  “Do you like fashion?” Hudson wondered.

  “I love fashion in the sense that you can choose what you wear. I don’t like the standards fashion has for what’s beautiful.”

  “Compassion is missing in fashion.”

  “That’s why your project seems important,” Rain replied, deadpan. “It could help raise living standards.”

  The conversation swerved to Hudson’s story. She’d attended high school in San Francisco, where she studied photography on a whim and was encouraged by a teacher she was still close to, to study art. She’d entered UCLA at age seventeen. Her plan to earn a master’s degree in London was deferred by a pregnancy, marriage to a German, a move to Germany, and raising a child. Soon, her marriage broke up and she was broke and barely hanging on in the former East Berlin. A one-hour photo shop was next to her apartment and it goaded her. “If you’re supposed to be doing something, things come together to help you.” She picked up her camera again, shooting the odd press photo for musicians and, in 2002, was asked by Peaches, an electronic musician and performance artist she’d photographed the year before for Spin magazine, to shoot the cover of a new record. It showed the singer in a fake thick beard and smudged mascara. “If you do something interesting, someone will see it,” Hudson said. “After shooting Peaches, things took off.”

  After an hour and a half of coffee and talk, the foreplay was over and Hudson asked, “Where’s your room?”

  “What are you after? What are you in the mood for photography-wise?”

  “People in their natural environment. The space that’s the most you. This’ll be the easiest photo shoot you’ve ever done.”

  While the pair prowled the loft, their talk turned to clothes. “I want you to be comfortable,” said Hudson. “Do one male and one female outfit. Whatever that means for you.”

  “Let my imagination run wild?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Be like a model? Or a person?”

  “Both!” Hudson grinned.

  So, as she readied a Canon 7D, a 35 mm digital camera, Rain rummaged through a bag of clothes, finally suggesting she wear men’s underwear, a tight top to show her breasts, “and hairy legs.” When she emerged, it was her turn to grin as Hudson’s eyes strafed Rain’s rather large breasts. “I don’t bind. It’s not good for you. It’s all about positive. It’s confusing to a lot of people, but not the lesbians.” A pause. “My agency says, no nips and no clit.”

  It was Hudson’s turn to deadpan. “We can work with that.”

  They decided to shoot Rain standing on her bed first. “We’re good to go,” Hudson said. “Feel free to be yourself—or not.”

  She began shooting and Rain asked, “Am I supposed to be natural or posing?”

  “Look over here. Perfect. Did you have to learn to model? Or were you a natural?”

  “I had to learn the difference between men and women. To be like a dude, I’ll do this, strong.” Rain struck an I-don’t-give-a-fuck pose against the wall behind her. Then she smoothly elongated her neck, her body, her legs, and one arm climbed the wall. “With women, everything has to be loooong and sexy.”

  Hudson was intrigued, shooting faster. “Do it again.” For a moment, she was David Bailey, and Veruschka was looming above her, doing the semisexual dance that’s often the subtext of fashion photographs.

  “Dudes can be, like, supercomfortable.” Rain grabbed the crotch of her shorts.

  “You’re a really good observer.”

  Rain stuck her nose in her armpit, then looked up with a perplexed male stare. “God, I’m just thinking so hard. There’s not a lot of vulnerability.” She morphed back into a woman, turning her head and arcing her chest. “You never face the camera straight on. You want your assets out there.”

  “Give me a few modeling faces. I want to see your signature look.”

  “Let me see.” Rain laughed, then dipped her chin to shoot Hudson a sullen stare from under her prominent eyebrows.

  “Deep, yet off-putting.” Hudson suggested a change into lingerie with a man’s jacket over it. “You pick, whatever your favorite is.”

  Rain returned, revealing a knife scar across her belly. Seeing Hudson spot it, she smirked. “I dated the wrong woman.”

  She took off her top; beneath was a gray bra. Hudson asked for a matching bottom, but when Rain waved a black thong instead, the photographer bobbed her head. “Yup!”

  Back in the bedroom, Rain wedged herself into a brick corner. The light was fading in the late afternoon, but for the moment it was moody and atmospheric—and Hudson shot even faster. “Now, if you want, play with your female side. It’s funny how fashion wants you to project a cold sexuality.”

  “The duck face, I call it. But technically, I’m kind of an anomaly, so I do what I want. I’ll ask what they want; they’re paying for it. But if not, I’ll do what I want.”

  Hudson chuckled. It sounded like encouragement. Then she moved Rain out into the middle of her big living room for one last shot, walking straight toward the camera. “That’s good, do it again.”

  “Do you want angry?”

  “I love it.” Hudson took the jacket off Rain’s shoulders.

  “Stripping me? Typical. ‘I’ll just hold your jacket. I’ll just hold your bra.’ ”

  “Are you freezing? But you’re a model. It’s your job.”

  “Fashion is to die for—a pair of shoes.” Rain smiled again. “Do you want one of me sitting on the toilet?”

  But the shoot was over and Hudson was staring intently at the screen on the rear of her camera, flicking her way through the pictures she’d taken. “Perfect.” She didn’t look up. “I am superhappy.”

  Like Hollywood directors, fashion photographers, the Svengalis who shoot editorial and advertising images of clothing and mold and elevate the stunners who star in them, are figures in the shadows who make those in front of their cameras glow like members of some special, enlightened tribe. But the world they inhabit has striking contrasts: it appears beautiful, but just beneath the pretty surface, like the images they create, the reality can be murkier, often decadent and sometimes downright ugly.

  Though they occupy an apparently superficial milieu, fashion photographers have become deeply influential figures. Fashion hawks clothes, accessories, and cosmetics through the work of the image merchants who manipulate compelling beauties—be they models, actresses, or, more recently, mere celebrities—in pictures (as well as in their real lives). But it also conveys a complex, ever-evolving psychology and social ambience, a commercial fiction that goes by the name lifestyle and has the proven ability to influence behavior and alter social norms. Its critics have blamed fashion and the images that sell it for everything from anorexia to heroin addiction.

  Focus is about fashion photographers and their field, not about fashion photographs themselves. It will not tell the whole
story of photography, which was born in Europe at the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, or try to encompass the panorama of the century after the 1840s, when the first photos showing the latest fashions were taken in Europe. By 1880, more than a dozen fashion journals were being published in the United States. The first magazine to mix words and photographs of clothing was La Mode Practique in 1892.

  Traditionally, the primary venues for fashion photographs have been periodicals, glossy magazines in particular, and advertisements commissioned by fashion manufacturers. An aspiring fashion photographer often begins a career by shooting “tests” of similarly aspiring models or friends, which are used as calling cards to gain the attention of, and assignments from, art directors and photo editors at magazines. These assignments pay little, but give a photographer priceless exposure. Photo credits in magazines lead to more lucrative advertising assignments.

  That double helix is the ladder photographers climb from anonymity to success and wealth—particularly if they are among the handful of shooters who work for big brands. Magazine editors and stylists are charged with choosing clothes and collaborating with photographers as to how those clothes will be photographed. But they also collaborate with fashion brands in ways—accepting gifts and moonlight styling jobs—that violate the traditional boundaries of journalism. And they work alongside large staffs of marketing and publishing executives, some of them also called editors, whose primary job is to keep advertisers happy.