14 DAY TRIAL // Fashion photographer Terry Richardson is as famous as he’s controversial, particularly in recent years, when more models stepped forward to tell terrific tales of what’s going on at his photo shoots and how inappropriately he behaves around them.
Terry knows all this and, while he owns up to being controversial because of the theme of some of his most popular portraits, he wants to set the record straight on one thing: he never had relations with a certain Miss Lindsay Lohan.
Following a new string of interviews from young models who claim to have been abused and degraded by Richardson in the name of “art,” the New York Mag’s The Cut is running a lengthy piece in his defense, called “The Perverse Case of Terry Richardson: Is Terry Richardson an Artist or a Predator?” which aims to offer him the platform needed to defend himself.
He does just that: Richardson says he sleeps well at night because he has a clean conscience, knowing he’s done nothing wrong to anyone, let alone force young, sometimes minor girls into acts they would never consent to, and thus traumatize them for life.
His assistant also speaks up for him, saying she’s not an enabler who sometimes acts as a “pimp” for him, getting him young models eager to break out in an industry that isn’t exactly known for offering equal chances to all.
Oddly enough, Richardson also uses the platform provided to him by the prestigious magazine to set the record straight on a supposed affair he carried out some time ago with Lindsay Lohan. That was before her most recent stint in rehab, when she lived at the Chateau Marmont and was even said to have had a room in his apartment.
Richardson photographed Lindsay countless times, in more or less provocative postures (mostly “more”), but the rumor that they slept together came from Lindsay herself. Richardson’s name was on that list of secret celebrity lovers she made some time ago, which leaked online recently.
“LiLo… Somehow she said we spent a romantic night making love at the Chateau Marmont. Which never happened. Then, on the internet, people are like, ‘He did this and that.’ But it’s totally untrue,” Richardson tells the publication.
It would be understandable for Richardson to want to distance himself from Lohan if the reports about a fling were untrue. His timing is odd, however: after all, the list has been out for months, which means he’s had plenty of time to issue a denial if he was really that bothered to be seen as Lindsay’s one-time lover.
Could it be that Terry is in serious damage control mode and he’s trying to rule out every possibility of anyone being able to say something negative about him?
He is the second man to run away from any association with the name Lohan: James Franco did the same just recently, actually saying in an interview that they didn’t share a bed but just a kiss – and that one lame too.