Yeah, yeah, yesterday’s news today…
Remember Gregory Dark? The ex-pornographer who went on to make videos for Britney Spears & Co.? Remember how when the word got out about Dark’s past work, Spears ditched him? Remember how we all shook our heads and said, “That’s showbiz”? I mean, strange bedfellows and all that, right? Oh, wait, that line is about politics…
Ring, ring.
“Senator Obama’s office.”
“Hey, we want to put a cover shoot of the Senator together for the September ’07 issue of Vibe magazine.”
“Cool! Who do you have in mind for the photographer?”
“Terry Richardson. Dude is cutting-edge. Very rough, very unpolished. A very real-life vibe, almost like candids.”
“Awesome. Let me just do a little checking around, and we’ll get back to you asap. The Senator does have to be careful about how he is perceived these days. You know how it is.”
“Um…maybe don’t bother checking around. Everything’s cool.”
“Oh. Okay. See you there!”
This post is not about President-Elect Obama. This post is about porn going mainstream. Because if the person on Team Obama who okayed this shoot spent just a couple of minutes on Google Image Search, they encountered some pretty special work from Mr. Richardson. A (cropped) image from his GQ shoot of Jessica Alba:
Of course, that photo is merely suggestive, if luridly so. I post it only to establish Richardson’s celebrity status (there’s plenty more). But the celeb stuff is only a trifle. From an ’04 profile in The Guardian [language alert]:
“I am standing in an overcrowded art gallery in downtown Manhattan, feeling slightly queasy. In front of me, taking up most of the wall, is a huge photograph of a naked girl engaged in the kind of sexual act that defies description here. Let’s just say that her hair is in a mess. There are many questions going through my head at this moment, not least why an image of this kind has ended up in an art gallery…
The gallery is bedecked with similar photographs: naked and glistening young girls, their legs akimbo, backsides thrust in the air, lipsticked mouths open in anticipation. Sometimes there is just one girl, snapped from above in an act of oral devotion, or in a post-coital daze; sometimes there are two, occasionally three. Sometimes, on closer inspection, the girls turn out to be boys, or boy-girls, their petite penises dangling helplessly between their long feminine legs. The only penis that does not dangle belongs to the photographer whose name graces the show, and whose naked frame and goofy, bespectacled face features throughout. His name is Terry Richardson, and the whole show consists of self-made images of Terry thrusting, rucking, prodding, pumping and, sometimes, grinning at the camera like a nerd let loose in porno heaven.”
Richardson doesn’t regard his work as porn: “‘The thing is, I don’t personally like porn,’ he says, shaking his head, and sucking on the first of several cigarettes he will get through over the next few hours, his voice sounding even deeper than usual due to all the talking he has done since the show’s opening. ‘Porn kind of bums me out because there is so much sadness and pain in that world. So little joy or even pleasure. I don’t use porn or even go to strip clubs, like a lot of my friends. I don’t like to exploit anybody. That’s not my bag. Everyone has fun on my shoots.’
This would indeed seem to be the case. The girls who now come knocking on the door of Terry Richardson’s studio to take part in what he calls his ‘spontaneous sex acts’ may be young or impressionable, exhibitionist or insecure, or all of the above, but they are all too eager and willing to perform for his camera.”
It’s a pretty heartbreaking story – the man has a tattoo on his torso of himself as a sad child. I’d spend more time on it, but Richardson’s story isn’t the point of this post.* The point of the post is that either a) whoever okayed the shoot didn’t bother to check the photographer out, even though the photographer was famous (and famously skeevy), or b) whoever okayed the shoot did check Richardson out, and just didn’t care.
And why should anyone care? Dude’s an artist; he’s just expressing himself. “‘Oh, I have lots of stuff I am working out through my work,’ he freely admits, though one suspects he tends to view his neuroses the way the rest of us might view our hobbies. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’m a sex addict, if that’s what you’re asking, but I do have issues, tons of them. Like, this current show could be about my midlife crisis. Or it could be something to do with the fact that since I gave up drinking and taking drugs, I have to get high on sex and being an exhibitionist. Or maybe it’s the psychological thing that I was a shy kid, and now I’m this powerful guy with his boner, dominating all these girls. In a way, that’s the very stuff I’m trying to work out in the work.'”
*Okay, I can’t resist including this: “‘I love sex,’ he says, ‘and, above all, I love the first time I have sex with someone. That’s the real buzz. Often girls have said to me: “Terry, it was all downhill after the first f*ck,” and that’s kind of true, I guess. Sometimes, lately, I find myself thinking I’d really love to settle down, get married, have kids, have a regular relationship.'”
Matthew,
Why a surprise? Our country is being bought and sold on image anyway…
(I make this as a non-partisan statement, at any rate – both sides are guilty of vacuity.)
To paraphrase William Carlos Williams:
“No ideas but in a good, cool image…”
JOB
To play devil’s advocate:
What if the campaign declined to use Terry Richardson because he was a Catholic? Or a Republican? Or a devotee of Ron Paul? We would probably argue that his politics, his past or even his personal life shouldn’t reflect upon his merit as an artist.
Question: did the referenced conversation actually take place prior to the shoot?
The referenced conversation is entirely fictional. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Agreed: his past/personal life ought not to reflect upon his merit as an artist – I’m not suggesting that his photos were lame. I’m saying his merit as an artist ought to reflect on his merit as an artist: the man has chosen to make his art out of hardcore porn, and has chosen to inject a pornographic ethos into even his most mainstream work – that Alba pic is a doozy. And the Kibosh show that the article mentions has some just delightful stuff featuring Richardson as a priest and his paramour as a nun. You can tell he’s a priest because he’s wearing that little bib thing with the collar attached. (Of course, that’s all he’s wearing.)
Even so: please note that nowhere do I suggest that a man who makes a book out pictures of himself being fellated by numerous women ought not to be allowed to photograph a presidential hopeful for a national magazine. I merely note that is remarkable that whoever okayed the shoot for Team Obama didn’t worry that someone might make such a suggestion. Put it this way: the man was forced to publicly distance himself from Jeremiah Wright because of the pastor’s inflammatory statements. But no one worried about distancing Obama from a photographer whose photographs had their own sort of inflammatory character.
“I merely note that is remarkable that whoever okayed the shoot for Team Obama didn’t worry that someone might make such a suggestion. Put it this way: the man was forced to publicly distance himself from Jeremiah Wright because of the pastor’s inflammatory statements. But no one worried about distancing Obama from a photographer whose photographs had their own sort of inflammatory character.”
But Wright would reflect upon Obama’s personal beliefs…his photographer, arguably wouldn’t.
Besides, what political risk is there? Only right-wing religious nuts care about pornography….So, yes, I ultimately agree with you.
It makes you wonder though, at what point does it all just explode the porn industry. Interesting that Richardson seems to have broken through to the other side. It all becomes boring. You’re still left with all your “issues.” What’s left but to have a “regular relationship?”
Also interesting is his reaction to his work being labeled as porn. For him, porn is about exploitation – something that the porn industry would definitely disagree with. So is he simply (and quite ironically) naive, or is he willfully ignorant?