judge city

I’m still not sure what I think of the Terry Richardson saga after his feature in the latest issue of New York. Or why he was featured on the cover. Or what I think about his photography in general.

The interview is quite good and worth a read, if not just to get a glimpse inside the mind of someone so arrested in development, he is blind to his own subversion of his catastrophic childhood ever-present in his photography and personal appearance (where it’s always  the 70’s).

And I don’t want to weigh in on whether he is a ‘predator’ or whether those girls actively wanted to shoot the sexually explicit shots as he and his team claim they did.  I was not there and I do not know what happened. Perhaps it was a bit of both, perhaps not.

Something which disturbed me aside from the icky resonant buzz of the he said/she said was the way these modeling agencies sent some of those models out–with little information, check-up, or regard except explicit instructions to ‘do as told.’

Not to place all or much of any blame on these unnamed modeling agencies, but I will say after reading this article  such agencies appeared as simply pimps who blindly send models to shoots, turn their faces away as they open their palms for the money, all while telling these young men and women: “This photographer is highly respected. Just do whatever he/she tells you to if you want to work with them or anyone else again.”

It is this sort of “respect the big shots at any cost”  attitude that has grossly pervaded the entertainment industry since its inception. We’ve all heard horrible ‘casting couch’/ ‘well ya want the part dontcha?’ lore (which I never encountered in my casting work)  as well as ‘paying dues’ as a standard practice of entering the industry. And of course it’s not always the case, but certainly happens more than we think or know as evidenced by the models coming forward in  this story.

These models are speaking up, but what about the many who aren’t? The many underage models from other countries who are not telling their side from incidents with other photographers?

This ‘pseudo-respect’ attitude applies for many entertainment interns too. When I started an internship program in Los Angeles it was hammered in me before I started my various internships to “always do what is asked”, “with a smile,” because you don’t want to seem “entitled.” Asking for gas money since you’re not even getting paid to work what should be an entry level job? HAH!

Basically: there is someone cheaper and hungrier than you and if you don’t want to do it, someone will.

At least I had the luxury of trusted university employees I could turn to if I felt slighted/abused/mishandled and thankfully I never had to. I can’t imagine these models feel safe enough to  tell their agent they lost them the job because they felt uncomfortable/disrespected.

Remember: there is someone younger, faster, cheaper, and hungrier.

Sure, models have the choice to say ‘no,’ but to that model wanting to fulfill their dreams and in the moment feeling like your agency and the photographer will blacklist you from future jobs if you don’t comply by the ‘rules’…is it still so easy to say no? To say no to a ‘career maker’?  To say no to someone who films supermodels for fun? Does that model even really have a choice in their world? Is it easier to ‘pay dues’ by taking photos with a star  or risk it all by saying ‘no?’

If everyone could make the ‘right’ choice all the time we’d all be at our respective goal weights, goal careers, wouldn’t spend, wouldn’t drink too much, wouldn’t get addicted to drugs,…that a captive in no physical restraints has a ‘choice’ to run away from her captor.  Telling the victim she had a ‘choice’ is bullshit. Just because choices exist, doesn’t mean they’re accessible. That someone’s fear and anxiety block them from seeing that the choice is always there, somewhere. It happens to all of us in small and big ways.

Sure, an intern isn’t as accomplished as a big producer and no one is asking anyone to treat the intern as such. And no, a new model is not established in the modeling industry as a multi-million dollar photographer is–but we must remember the human aspect of it all.

There needs to be a new policy of  “You can say no if you are uncomfortable with what is going on. Say no if you need to. No one will hate you for saying no.”