The New York Times
12/29/2020 7:01 AM
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Updated 12/29/2020 7:01 AM
In September 2020, model and actress
Emily Ratajkowski
published an essay where she recounted, among other harmful experiences, how she had been
sexually assaulted
by a photographer named
Jonathan Leder
when she was 20 years old.
For years, Ratajkowski wrote on the
TheCut
website
, Polaroid photographs of her naked and half-naked, taken during that session, were displayed in galleries and republished without her permission.
In response, Leder called Ratajkowski's allegations "false and lewd" and his essay "tasteless and unfounded".
Years ago, when Ratajkowski began publicly denouncing Leder for publishing books with his nude photos, the photographer presented
The New York Times
with a copy of a
disclaimer contract
(a type of contract that specifies or limits the use of the image of a model) signed by Ratajkowski's agent.
Photographer Jonathan Leder.
Photo: Reuters
The agreement authorized the photos to be used in "a future Polaroids book."
But, according to Ratajkowski,
his agent denied signing anything
and also said his lawyer had hinted that the signature was forged.
At her home in Brooklyn, New York,
Kathleen Sorbara
read the essay uneasily.
Leder had photographed her twice in 2013;
He did not attack her but he did continue to publish images of her, also against her wishes, he said.
Sorbara, now 25 and selling vintage clothing, wondered if images from seven years ago were still circulating.
He searched Instagram with Leder's name as a hashtag.
He didn't have to track down much: In August, a Japanese company had started selling T-shirts printed with provocative photos taken by Leder, including those of Sorbara at age 18 in underwear.
It felt like rape
, she said.
She hadn't signed a waiver agreement, which is the norm in all kinds of photo shoots.
Often times, agents handle paperwork, which means models don't always know about contracts.
Still, according to two of Leder's colleagues, most photographers do not tend to overlook the wishes of a model or her agency in this context, be it out of mutual respect or out of a desire for good business relationships.
Jonathan Leder's book with Emily Ratajkowski's photos.
Photo: Imperial Publishing
"It's immoral," Sorbara said of what Leder did.
"There is a certain level of trust when you collaborate with someone on an art project, especially when it involves your naked body."
Since the publication of Ratajkowski's essay (in which she recounts that Leder penetrated her with his fingers after the session, while she was drunk from having the wine he offered her), more women have come out to tell stories about Leder, ranging from his discomfort from the continuous use that he made of certain images up to accusations of sexual abuse.
The New York Times
tried to reach out to Leder, 47, for comment for this story, through phone calls, emails and text messages.
Did not answer.
It is devastating to realize that many women have been taken advantage of and that they felt incapable of doing anything about it.
Emily Ratajkowski, model
Kathleen Sorbara Today: She also reported Jonathan Leder.
Photo: NYT.
Exception or system?
Leder is not the first photographer singled out for blowing up young bodies while surveillance personnel shrugged or turned around.
Terry Richardson, Bruce Weber, Mario Testino and Patrick Demarchelier have also been charged with misconduct.
None of them have been charged with a crime and they all issued denials.
Only one, Weber, is on trial.
“These are the kinds of stories we hear every day,”
said Sara Ziff, founder of the Model Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the labor rights of models and offers a support line and workshops.
Leder became known as a photographer with
Jacques
, a magazine that he and Danielle Hettara, then his wife and former model, began publishing in 2009. She was the editor-in-chief and he was the creative director.
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The magazine, which was inspired by old issues of
Playboy
and contained what Leder once called "healthy" nudity, was well received.
Soon they asked him to make videos for brands like Adidas and Louis Vuitton.
Hettara said that, in October 2011, after two years of marriage and two children together, she confronted her husband about his affair with Nola Palmer, the protagonist of the feature film he was directing.
During the argument, according to a police report filed by Hettara in Woodstock, New York,
Leder squeezed her neck while she held her young daughter.
At the time, she stated in an interview, "I was so shocked that I couldn't remember the number to call 911."
He went to the police five days later, after speaking with friends and family and intermittently trying to reconcile with Leder.
They granted him a restraining order.
Leder with his ex-wife, Danielle Hettara, who denounced him for violence.
Photo: NYT.
Leder was arrested in January 2012 and charged with criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation and endangering the well-being of a minor, but
was dismissed at trial
.
The case documents are sealed, but Leder's dismissal was discussed at a hearing related to his divorce in September 2017. At the hearing, Leder denied the existence of the incident and having ever been violent towards a woman, according to a transcript. judicial.
Over the years, Hettara related her story to business associates in the hopes that they would stop working with her ex.
"A lot of people didn't care because, as you can see, modeling agencies kept sending them models," she said.
"
I was
immediately
labeled the jealous wife
."
In a 2014 issue of
Jacques
(whose theme revolved around betrayal and had Leder in the head), Hettara identified herself as "a survivor of domestic violence" who "had a nervous breakdown because of it."
She and Palmer, who had broken up with Leder, did a photo shoot together and exchanged emotional public letters.
The week after the publication of Ratajkowski's essay, Palmer, 29,
wrote on Instagram that Leder was also his "abuser
.
"
He said he was watching her weight and checking her hairstyle and clothes.
I told him not to work with anyone else.
It instilled in him that his body could only "be respected and appreciated if it is naked."
While shooting Leder's movie in Florida (where she was temporarily living with him, Hettara and their two children), she called her parents and her agent to tell them she was scared and wanted to go home, she said.
The movie, in which Palmer was a stripper, was not finished.
Because of the unreleased footage left in Leder's possession, he claimed, he was afraid to speak out against him.
Hettara said that shortly after separating from Leder, he discovered in a warehouse closet several photographic contact plates from a magazine photoshoot for which he had been hired in 2011. The photographed was
a 15-year-old girl
who, In some of the images, her blouse was unbuttoned and showed a transparent bodice;
in another she posed kneeling with her legs slightly spread on a mattress.
Models under the age of 15 have long been used in fashion photography, but the photos Hettara found went beyond the work she and Leder used to do with minors, she explained, and
found them deeply disturbing
, as she has expressed in court documents. .
It's still common for young girls to be asked to undress during photo shoots and they don't always feel empowered to say no, Ziff said.
Models often don't feel comfortable complaining to their agent, he said, because
"they don't want to look like difficult people and jeopardize future contracts
.
"
Young women will continue to be thrown into the wolf's mouth as long as the modeling agencies do not stand their ground.
Kathleen Sorbara, model
One of the photos of Emily Ratajkowski that Jonathan Leder includes in a book.
|
The explotion
Sorbara was photographed twice by Leder at Woodstock in November 2013: first for a blog and then for a post Leder planned to edit the following year,
A Study in Fetishism: Manifesto, Vol. 1
(Study on Fetishism: Manifesto, Vol. . 1), where Ratajkowski appeared.
Sorbara said she did not feel comfortable until the second session.
When he arrived, he said, he was surprised by the concept: "Lesbian porn poster from the 1950s and 1960s."
At one point,
Leder asked her to kiss another model
, who was his girlfriend at the time, and she refused.
After viewing the photos, Sorbara asked through her agent that her name be removed from the project.
Leder agreed, according to emails delivered to the
Times
.
The
Vol. 1
not only included his name (and, on top, your photo) but also for the next two years, she saw images of sitting in a gallery in Los Angeles and other art publication.
"Those photos were used for different projects for which I had never given permission," said Sorbara.
He wanted his agency, Wilhelmina Models, to take legal action.
"I entrusted the photos to that photographer because the agency arranged a contract with him," he wrote in an email to the agency.
"But now those photos are being reproduced and sold over and over again."
The following year, in 2016, Sorbara came to a casting and found that the job was another photoshoot with Leder at Woodstock.
He was not at the casting, but she was appalled that the agency had put her in the position of perhaps meeting him again.
She received an apology and was promised that the agency had noted that "neither you nor any other girl should take pictures with that photographer."
But Sorbara said she believed that "young women will continue to be thrown into the wolf's mouth" as long as "agencies don't stand their ground" or as long as there is no better oversight of photographers by the industry.
Ratajkowski did not agree to be interviewed for this article but did send a statement through her press agent: “Writing the essay
Buying Myself Back
was not easy and publishing it was even scarier.
But listening to other women (from inside and outside the industry) tell how much they identified with him and how much he told them about his own experiences, made me feel hopeful and feel less alone, a feeling that should not be underestimated. "
"It is devastating to realize that many women have been taken advantage of and that they felt incapable of doing anything about it," he concluded.
Translation: Elisa Carnelli