Following photographer Terry Richardson’s ‘correction’ of the allegations made against him, the #NoMoreTerry campaign to boycott Terry and his collaborators has gained even more traction, with over one million mentions of the hashtag online this weekend.
Terry has long been accused of sexually coercing young models during photo shoots, and they say that they will comply for fear of not being booked on such a big job again. This is because Richardson is supposedly adored across the worlds of fashion, publishing and music – he’s shot Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, Jared Leto, Kate Moss, and even Barack Obama, and regularly works for Vogue, V, W, GQ and Harper’s Bazaar.
After a model gave a graphic account of the abuse she alleges she suffered at the hands of Terry, another model came forward with her story of his alleged inappropriate behaviour, which includes a Skype chat where he allegedly calls her ‘brainless’ for saying she won’t sleep with him to get work.
Terry then responded to all of the allegations on The Huffington Postin an article entitled ‘Correcting The Rumors’. Explaining that he had remained silent on the initial allegations, which were made four years ago, he went on to say that the new wave of claims ‘seemed especially vicious and distorted, moving outside the realm of critical dialogue and becoming nothing more than an emotionally charged witch hunt.’
Comparing himself to renowned photographers Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photography is similarly pornographic in content, he then denied the claims: ‘I have never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do.’
‘Sadly, in the ongoing quest for controversy-generated page views, sloppy journalism fueled by sensationalised, malicious, and manipulative recountings of this work has given rise to angry internet crusades.’ He added: ‘Well-intentioned or not, they are based on lies.’
However, we’ve totally seen images of Terry getting head off of a model under a desk, him taking photos of his dick in a model’s mouth and then a lot of this stuff sounds too weird and specific to be made up, like the allegation he put a tampon into a cup of hot water to make tampon tea.
That said, none of the allegations have resulted in any charge against Terry, and at present, he is entirely innocent of any sexual crime.
That won’t stop the #NoMoreTerry group, however, which is encouraging people to boycott the magazines and artists who have worked with the photographer, and use social media to get them to stop working with him. ‘Send these companies and people a message. Email them, Tweet them, write on their Facebook pages, we won’t buy their support of a sexual predator.’
Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Jared Leto, Cara Delevingne and Miley Cyrus are all on the list. However, there’s no word yet on whether the #NoMoreTerry campaign will target Obama, though.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.