Fashion photographer Bruce Weber was “nothing but professional” during his time with male model Andrew Ashton despite allegations that he held creepy castings for his shoots.
“He never tried anything sexual with me,” Ashton told Page Six on Wednesday. “He never tried to put his hands on me. He never tried to push me in any way to do something that I didn’t want to do. I was always surrounded by a professional team and professional supermodels.”
Ashton was introduced to Weber, 71, in 2010 through an agent that he met at a Hollywood based gym while he was visiting from his native U.K.
“My very first photoshoot with Bruce — I didn’t even have a working American visa to be honest — it was in Miami,” he told us. “He liked to meet the models individually before he shot you to see how you are as a person and to see how comfortable you are as a model. Bruce, as a fashion photographer, is an artist. He wants to see if you’re comfortable in your own skin whether you’re in clothes or you’re naked.”
“He would only shoot models who felt comfortable in their own skin,” Ashton — who is now represented by CK Talent Management — said. “So when I got to meet Bruce, he wanted to take photos of me with his Polaroid … we had a great conversation but I was nervous because I had been told amazing things about Bruce, but I heard you only got one chance to shoot with Bruce Weber.”
“Bruce wanted to get to know about me, my background, my history and what my interests were,” he added. The duo proceeded to work together consistently “for almost two-and-a-half years to three years” after that and shot campaigns for clients including Abercrombie & Fitch and Vogue.
The magazine’s editor-at-large Grace Coddington posted a photo with Weber on Wednesday and received backlash for supporting the alleged harasser.
“When I would shoot with Bruce, he’d have me and the other models breathe a martial arts technique to try to relax because if you’re shooting naked with girls or semi-naked or sexy he wanted to take the image as if it hadn’t been photographed,” he explained. “Some models felt uncomfortable with that, so they criticized it.”
Weber is being sued by model Jason Boyce over an alleged incident in 2014 where he was asked to rub his own genitals during a casting session. A second male model also accused Weber of sexual harassment.
Vanity Fair canceled their Art Basel Miami party honoring Weber’s book after the allegations surfaced.
Weber’s rep did not immediately return a request for comment.