Richardson, Terry

FTW

New York: JMc & GHB, 2006. 4to.; illustrated throughout in color and b&w; pictorial boards.

Trade edition of 1,000. $75.00
Signed, limited edition of 20 copies, in slipcase with two original photographs. $2,000.00

Richardson has lately emerged as one of contemporary art’s most compelling photographers. His work still retains its punk edge. It combines sex with slapstick, provocation with giddy abandon, glamour and celebrity with an utter lack of pretension. He creates commercially viable images for designers and magazines even as he produces aesthetically credible work for galleries.  It is a tricky balancing act that few artists manage to pull off with any consistency or panache. Richardson does it with swagger and apparent ease.
This publication features Richardson’s photographs of himself and the crew of punk rock kids he hung out with in Southern California, 1983, nearly one hundred photographs from that period. Terry’s punk scene was Ojai, California, ‘tv party’ and a case of Meister Brau from Ralph’s supermarket. In LA the punk sneer became a lunatic grin. That grin remains an integral element in his photography twenty-three years after these early works were made.