Terry world
Last Friday, 17 stories above the damp rush hour of the central business district in Hong Kong, and under the impassive gaze of a miniature poodle in a hot pink sweater, Terry Richardson looked up from behind his signature square-framed aviators and grinned at me.
The room, though lightly buzzing in the way that you might expect from smaller, more intimate art gatherings, was still a far cry from the clamor one might associate with the prolific yet controversial fashion photographer. One with so much pull that he can apparently convince Martha Stewart to drop her plans and make an appearance at his X-rated baby shower (which, really, look it up, actually did happen several days prior).
“Portraits,” his fourth solo exhibition with Galerie Perrotin, runs from Jan. 14 to Feb. 20, and features a bite-sized serving of some of Richardson’s iconic snapshot-aesthetic work. Blown-up photographs line the walls of everyone and everything from Amy Winehouse squaring off with a rooster to Dennis Hopper obscured in smoke to ‘90s model Eva Herzigová on the hood of a car, wrapped in nothing but her Big Bird-yellow fur and the dull flash of Richardson’s point-and-shoot camera. It’s a familiar, trademark style that has defined his two-decade-long career — often with the help of little more than a white wall and the crude flash of the cultish, defunct Yashica T4.
Peace out: The author with photographer Terry Richardson
By the time I made my way to the gallery, Richardson’s hour-long book signing was already winding down. With only about a handful of other people left in the entire space, the photographer joked and chatted easily with us remaining stragglers while signing copies of Terry Richardson: Volumes 1 & 2, his first full-career monograph by Rizzoli. Divided into two books (portraits and fashion) and compiling over 600 images from his personal archives, the collection features both standout forgotten work (see: the 2001 Sisley campaign, a young Conan O’Brien for Details magazine, a sobby-faced Morrissey) to more recent visual entries in pop culture history (see: Kermit the Frog decked in Supreme, James Franco in drag, Megan Fox with a cherry in her mouth).
Star studded: Photographer Terry Richardson has photographed personalities such as Lil Wayne and Kate Moss.
Among the tiny group still idling by his signing table in the end were a heavily pregnant woman and her older husband, a shy, purple-haired teen, and a group of skate punks who couldn’t afford a copy of his book, but with whom Richardson gamely posed for a photo anyway. A weird, motley cast of characters that would only ever have assembled at the call of Terry. Not unlike the many subjects in his work.
