He has a famously winning way with his subjects and has a challenging vision for photography. It nevertheless remains the case that we re unlikely to see a shot of two models fellating Mario Testino simultaenouly, or a photo of, say, Helmut Newton running naked along a beach, hand-in-hand with a model, his semi-erect knob slapping around in the breeze two of Richardson s more notable recent set-ups. In a shoot for Arena Homme Plus several years ago, Richardson photographed himself in a shirt, socks and shoes, but no trousers; once again, the famous T-bone visibly dangled below the hemline of the shirt as its owner fixes the the lens with a serious stare.
What a dick, the editor s letter wrote. A dick, that is, that swings both ways. Plenty has been remarked on how he blurs the boundaries between art and fashion, documentary and pornography, and Richardson s talent for creating images is matched by a genius for ambiguous sensation derived from confronting the boundaries of acceptibility in the fashion mag pages.
I don't pictures - I make pictures, he has said, referring to his habit of appearing in his picture, caricaturing himself as a seedy, solicitous voyeur equal parts the leering, raincoated old man who causing consternation in playgrounds, and the moustachioed stud of pornography s hairy Seventies era. In many cases, it is one of Richardson s assistants who presses the shutter but what you see is Terry s vision of the world, and of himself. Whether Richardson s work is closest to fashion, art or pornography is open to interpretation.
He says he feel fantastic about being the subject of his photography I realy enjoy modelling, he tells me but firmly disbelieves he is more interesting than his subjects. But the recurrence of the photographer on the other side of the lens suggests his work is probably closer to self-portraiture than anthing else. It certainly appeals to common generational fantasies many of photos in his books show people taking their clothes, larking about, smoking, having fun, having sex.
What s my idea of fun? he wonders. Just to enjoy the mood that s going on and not making it too oppressive.
Superficially, Richardson s method is unsophisticated. Mining the American documentary tradition pioneered by William Egglestone, Robert Frank and Nan Goldin, Richardson s process is built on the point-and-shoot aesthetic. Whereas most fashion photography requires complicated lighting, production and set-ups with big cameras, Richardson made his name shooting on cheap 35mm compact cameras like the Yashica T4.
Although he says practice has evolved, using digital and bigger cameras, its soul is the honesty that comes from pure spontaneity. The spontaneity that it allows you to have is something I really work off of, he says. The enegry you can get you can get in front of the camera when it doesn t have to be fussed about is something that is great.
He once shot Maggie Rizer for British Vogue on disposable instamatics from an airport newsagent, complete with red-eye, lens flare and fuzzy focus This kind of horny, hedonistic and consciously trashy work has transformed Richardson into a feted celebrity amid the airbrushed, deeply conservative spheres of fashion and Hollywood. He has shot global campaigns for Gucci, Miu Miu, Chloe, Nike and Sisley the latter with some blunt visual references to bestial pornography, most notably the connoisseur s under-the-counter classic, Animal Farm. Meanwhile his portraits of celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Ford, Kanye West, Maggie Gylenhall, Pharrell Williams and Chloe Sevigny imparted them with a raw and visceral sexuality, quite the opposite of the sexless images curated and policed by the Hollywood PR machine.
They solicit the Richardson touch precisely because it is dirty and brutally exposing, a kind of reverse alchemy that turns gold back into lead. I would say that s reason, yeah, Richardson says. But also the humour that you don't see in other people s pictures.
There s a certain sense of reality to my photographs that other people don't give you. An obvious case is his most recent output - the sleeve portraits for Justin Timberlake s FutureSex/LoveSounds album, in which the former Mickey Mouse Club starlet trashes a discoball, hides his face with a silk scarf and pulls a shoot-from-the-hip gangster pose that s more than faintly reminiscent of Andy Warhol s Double Elvis diptych. Timberlake comes off looking considerably more cool and dangerous than he did tearing off Janet Jackson s clothes during the Superbowl ad break.
And although Richardson denies it was a conscious reference, it s not unrealistic to think that the photographer shares something with Warhol the love of trash and deadbeat glamour, the self-created persona, the celebrity friends and a certain, very New York kind of ironic inscrutability that leave plenty of unexplained gaps ready to be filled by speculation. I have a wide range of work and and don't just do one type, he agrees, just like Andy didn't just do Brillo boxes. He evolved and moved on and did othere rthings, and do as well.
You have to to survive, don't you. Richardson has been positively embraced for blurring boundaries just as Warhol lwas celebrated for doing the same between art, consumerism and pop culture. The prurient may argue that some of Richardson s work isn't fashion or art masquerading as pornography it s just pornography, regardless of the ironies it comes wrapped in.
Everyone else can probably just accept that, like other cultural activist forged in the irony-obsessed Mid-Nineties, Richardson in the end uses irony to forces an honest acceptance of the danger and dirtiness of humanity. That s why his work is at its strongest in the mode of self-portrait. Richardson experienced a difficult upbringing his father Bob, a noted fahsion photographer, once lived as a bum and his mum ran off with a succession of rock stars and he is now recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction.
You suspect the gangly, gawky Richardson was unlucky in love. But unpick the layers of Richardson s invented perv-sona and hold it up to the light of his pictures today, and you see a a man having a lot of sex, meeting a lot of models, being paid plenty and having a whale of a time. In the end, the notion that Richardson s work is self-therapy as much as self-portraiture is what ascribes it its resonance.
Who, after all, could fail to feel a bit better with a picture of themselves running naked down a beach with a model? He has a famously winning way with his subjects and has a challenging vision for photography.
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