English
Welcome to Terryworld
by Dian Hanson
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Through your art you work out emotional things, psychological things. I found it's fun to get naked. When you get sober, stop drinking or taking drugs, you need new ways to get rushes. Getting naked and running around, or having sex in front of a bunch of people, is such a rush. My motto is, I'd never ask anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself. So now I let girls take pictures of me naked and they can stay clothed. It does raise that bar, though, you have to do more and more, like with drugs. What can I do now to get that big thrill?"
In 1983 nudism was still years away and drugs were very much the big thrill for Terry. "Me and my friends were just sitting around smoking weed all day and watching television after [I graduated from] high school," he says. One day his exasperated mother unplugged the television and Terry tore up the apartment, throwing her across the room. She had him arrested. He returned to Hollywood and his rock-star dreams. Though his living expenses were low - he shared a four hundred dollar a month apartment with two other aspiring rock stars - food and drugs weren't free. Terry began assisting photographers, setting up lights, changing film, and one, a man named Tony Kent who'd once worked for his father, taught him the basics of photography. "I started thinking, 'I could do this. These guys suck and make lots of money and have houses and all.' I had these Hollywood friends who were actors, like Donovan and Alex Winter and Balthazar Getty, who I was hanging out with. I started photographing them. That was '89."
Soon after Bob Richardson surfaced in San Francisco. Terry was getting portrait work from the Hollywood-based gay lifestyle magazine The Advocate by then, but Bob convinced him to move up north with the promise of molding him into a fashion photographer, so he could, as Terry says, "Once again conquer the world." Bob took Terry beyond the basics he'd learned from Kent, teaching him not just the mechanics, but the art of photography. "I took photos and my dad critiqued them," says Terry. With Bob's mentoring the two put together a portfolio and Terry took it to New York. Bob followed, and father and son set up business as The Richardsons. It lasted six months. "I would take the pictures and he would kind of art direct and we would hang out together and get drunk and smoke tons of weed," Terry says. "We were working for Glamour and Mademoiselle doing these really cheesy small pictures and stuff. Then we did a few portraits for Vibe magazine."
The urban style magazine was closer to Terry's world than Bob's. Bob Richardson pioneered documentary-style fashion photography in the early sixties. His chain-smoking, melancholic models introduced realism into an often stiff, studio-bound genre, but the cool sophistication of Bob's photos referenced his upper class New York roots. Terry's squalid Hollywood punk background demanded a different kind of expression. In Vibe Terry saw an audience that might be receptive to life as he knew it, so when the magazine asked The Richardsons to shoot a major fashion piece, Terry had to act.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Through your art you work out emotional things, psychological things. I found it's fun to get naked. When you get sober, stop drinking or taking drugs, you need new ways to get rushes. Getting naked and running around, or having sex in front of a bunch of people, is such a rush. My motto is, I'd never ask anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself. So now I let girls take pictures of me naked and they can stay clothed. It does raise that bar, though, you have to do more and more, like with drugs. What can I do now to get that big thrill?"
In 1983 nudism was still years away and drugs were very much the big thrill for Terry. "Me and my friends were just sitting around smoking weed all day and watching television after [I graduated from] high school," he says. One day his exasperated mother unplugged the television and Terry tore up the apartment, throwing her across the room. She had him arrested. He returned to Hollywood and his rock-star dreams. Though his living expenses were low - he shared a four hundred dollar a month apartment with two other aspiring rock stars - food and drugs weren't free. Terry began assisting photographers, setting up lights, changing film, and one, a man named Tony Kent who'd once worked for his father, taught him the basics of photography. "I started thinking, 'I could do this. These guys suck and make lots of money and have houses and all.' I had these Hollywood friends who were actors, like Donovan and Alex Winter and Balthazar Getty, who I was hanging out with. I started photographing them. That was '89."
Soon after Bob Richardson surfaced in San Francisco. Terry was getting portrait work from the Hollywood-based gay lifestyle magazine The Advocate by then, but Bob convinced him to move up north with the promise of molding him into a fashion photographer, so he could, as Terry says, "Once again conquer the world." Bob took Terry beyond the basics he'd learned from Kent, teaching him not just the mechanics, but the art of photography. "I took photos and my dad critiqued them," says Terry. With Bob's mentoring the two put together a portfolio and Terry took it to New York. Bob followed, and father and son set up business as The Richardsons. It lasted six months. "I would take the pictures and he would kind of art direct and we would hang out together and get drunk and smoke tons of weed," Terry says. "We were working for Glamour and Mademoiselle doing these really cheesy small pictures and stuff. Then we did a few portraits for Vibe magazine."
The urban style magazine was closer to Terry's world than Bob's. Bob Richardson pioneered documentary-style fashion photography in the early sixties. His chain-smoking, melancholic models introduced realism into an often stiff, studio-bound genre, but the cool sophistication of Bob's photos referenced his upper class New York roots. Terry's squalid Hollywood punk background demanded a different kind of expression. In Vibe Terry saw an audience that might be receptive to life as he knew it, so when the magazine asked The Richardsons to shoot a major fashion piece, Terry had to act.
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(c) Terry Richardson