Terry Richardson (Fashion)

Terry Richardson born August 14th 1965 in New York City, New York.  He is the son of Bob Richardson formerly a fashion photographer.  He originally didn't want to be a photographer he wanted to be a punk rock musician, he played bass guitar in the punk rock band The Invisible Government for 4 years.  Terry Richardson's mother gave him his first snapshot camera in 1982, he used it to document his life and the punk rock scene in Ojai, California.  In 1992 Richardson quit his punk rock band and moved from Ojai, California to New York City, New York.  He began shooting scene of young people partying and New York City's nightlife.  Richardson made his big break when he was living in New York City he published fashion photos for the first time in magazine Vibe in 1994.  He did an advertising campaign in 1995 for fashion designer Katharine Hamnett spring 1995 collection.  Following the advertising campaign he moved to London, England where he worked for magazines such as The Face, i-D and Arena.  Throughout Richardson's career he has shot campaigns, fashion brands and designers such as Marc Jacobs, Aldo, Supreme, Sisley, Tom Ford and Yves Saint Laurent.  He has done work for several magazine including Rolling Stone, Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ along with a lot  more.  Richardson has a certain style of work and a lot of recurring themes, notably for putting high profile celebrities in mundane situations and photographing them using traditionally pedestrian methods, he also explores the ideas of sexuality.  Richardson's main trait is the plane white background and he also takes pictures with the person he is photographing.  Also known for his non sexual portraits he has taken non sexual photos of politicians and actors such as Samuel L Jackson, Sharon Stone, Gwyneth Paltrow, ASAP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, Jon Bon Jovi, Daft Punk, LeBron James and Barack Obama.

Here is one of Terry Richardson's  photos and the subject being 'Breaking Bad' star Aaron Paul and straight away you can tell that it is a Terry Richardson photo because of the white background he loves to use, the main reason he uses the white background so that the main focus is only the subject.  The lighting of this photo is coming from the subject's left hand side and you can tell this because of how bright it is on the left hand side and as you go across it gets darker but not that dark because it is a really bright light.  You can only just see a shadow of his head maybe this is because he is really close to the backdrop or they have positioned the lighting to make sure there isn't that much of a shadow in the shot.  The facial expression is unusual for a male to be pulling because it is a expression that a female would pull to make her look sexy, so because he is pulling this face it kind of suggests that he is trying to show that he is a sexy male.  Also the picture kind of looks like a mug shot because you can only see so much of his body so Terry will have to have been standing relatively close when taking the picture.  One thing that stands out is his eyes when the picture is bigger his eyes stand out because they look really bright but when in natural lighting they are darker, so the lighting used makes them look brighter and make them stand out.