Terry Richardson Captures Lindsay Lohan Again

I recently bemoaned the lack of interesting tabloid fodder from Lindsay Lohan. Sure, I followed her crashing into that truck when she wasn’t supposed to be driving, due to insurance concerns as she tries to resurrect her career by starring as Elizabeth Taylor in a Lifetime movie, but the spark seems to have faded so completely that it very much dilutes the pleasure of following her antics. Not that I take pleasure in anyone crashing, whether it’s literal or figurative, but to me Lohan has had an “it” quality that can shine through the screen at times and makes her a figure of interest.

Now Lohan has teamed up again with Terry Richardson, a photographer with a less than stellar moral reputation in the fashion industry, as I’ve noted before. Ethical or not, though, he does have a knack for compelling photographs. It’s not just that he photographs women in a state of half-dress, although I’m sure that’s part of it. Richardson’s work oozes sex and discontent, but it’s not just the surface of sleaze — he grabs sleaze by its soul and captures it with the camera.

Egotastic! has the latest pictures that Richardson took of Lohan at The Chateau Marmont, which is a hotel in West Hollywood. Wikipedia calls the hotel “historic,” for whatever that’s worth, and list a number of artists who have gained inspiration from (or inside?) the structure, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Annie Leibovitz.

My favorite picture of the bunch is the one where Richardson is visible in the mirror alongside Lohan. It shouldn’t work — the mirror is odd-sized, Richardson’s off-kilter, and Lohan is looking haggard. And yet it’s not as disposable as most fashion photography. We see the ember of life that remains in Lohan. Is it dying off? Might it be rekindled? There’s a real person somewhere there underneath all the escapades, and I think I like Richardson’s photo shoot because it displays both the real and the unreal Lohan — the day-to-day person as well as her image as a star.

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In case the mildly freaky is too, well, mild for you, there are also copies of some gun-play pictures Richardson took of Lohan and posted on his Tumblr site before taking them down. These pics dial up the disturbing to 11.