Gabriele Galimberti, the photographer who shot Balenciaga’s controversial ad campaign which pictured young children both holding teddy bears dressed in BDSM-like harnesses, now fears for his life as death threats are pouring in towards him.
“I get messages like ‘we know where you live.’ ‘We are coming to kill you and your family.’ ‘We are going to burn your house.’ ‘You have to kill yourself, f–king pedophile,’” he told The Guardian, adding that they’re almost entirely coming from America.
“I’m a documentary photographer. I photograph what I find there,” Galimberti said, claiming that he had little say in the ad campaign’s content. “For me, if the room is red or yellow, it doesn’t make any difference.”
Galimberti said he’s also taking the brunt for an additional, highly controversial photo campaign in which papers from a Supreme Court case that upheld part of a federal child pornography law were shown beneath a pictured handbag.
“The two separate ad campaigns in question reflect a series of grievous errors for which Balenciaga takes responsibility,” a statement from the brand read. They recently dropped a $25M lawsuit over the handbag image.
Although the photographer said he had no involvement in that shoot, Galimberti added that the bear campaign is often posed next to the court papers in posts shared throughout social media and later by publications. In response, he’s sued four media outlets per The Guardian.
He is also claiming that the brand, along with creative director Denma, did not do enough to address the public during the nearly month-long scandal, thus putting the photographer’s safety at risk.
“I was writing [Balenciaga] emails every day – two or three or four emails per day – telling them, ‘guys, people are looking for me. They say that they want to come here and kill me,” Galimberti said, claiming that the company had advised to make his Instagram account private. “Please do something. Write a new statement.’”
In early December, Demna, who reportedly did not meet or speak with Galimberti on this, finally addressed the campaign, writing: “I want to personally apologize for the wrong artistic choice of concept for the gifting campaign with the kids and I take my responsibility. It was inappropriate to have kids promote objects that had nothing to do with them.”
Galimberti also recalled what it was like to shoot the ad campaign. The children photographed were Balenciaga employees’, he alleged. Before children were brought on the set, he claimed mannequins had been used in their place to get approval from higher-ups from the label.
“We took some photos and then the photos were going from my camera to someone’s computer and then they were sending these photos to [someone at] the headquarters of Balenciaga,” he said. “When they say OK, we simply replaced the mannequin with a real kid.”
Though, the photographer said he was oblivious to any wrongdoing at the time.
“When they saw those bags, everybody was telling them they were punk. Nobody ever mentioned BDSM,” he said. “I can recognize if we are going too far or not, but in that occasion I trust them and I didn’t see anything so wrong.”