"Flowers for my Mom from Harry Beee and Allee." Posted to terrysdiary.com on 9/13/12
Terry Richardson has never been a favorite photographer of mine. Still, it is worth taking a look at his blog 1 to see the photos that he took around the time of his mother’s death. (Find September 18 and scroll back from there.) The photos are a direct, “unflinching” look at this experience, in the words of my esteemed colleague John at American Photo 2. This episode has changed my view of him, if only a little, for all the reasons that John lays out in his article.
The only thing I would add is that the photos reminded me a lot of Nobuyoshi Araki, another photographer who, rightly or wrongly, is sometimes dismissed as a simple pornographer. A couple of years ago, Araki had a show at Rat Hole Gallery in memory of his recently-deceased cat. I went to the gallery thinking that it would be awful, and some part of me was ready to write him off entirely. But the show was genuinely moving, and I haven’t looked at Araki in the same way since. I’m really not sure how dramatically my opinion of Terry Richardson will change, but for a few days at least, he had me thinking of him in terms of Araki.