Cameraforaface

Possible trigger warning for emotional/sexual abuse:

I kept a lot of my feelings inside about our relationship for a long long time. Sometimes, I don’t even really know why. I was done protecting you. You hurt me, you degraded me, you stole from me and you drove a wedge between me and the people I was closest to. That’s the way you wanted it. You had someone all to yourself. All to yourself to ignore when you wanted, take money from when you wanted, yell at when you wanted. Sure, those things weren’t always happening 24/7 but they happened plenty. 

Did I care about you? Somehow, yes. But it dwindled. It morphed. It became something different. I felt like I both hated you and needed you at the same time. You made me believe that. I was in such a cycle of abuse that leaving it felt scary. It was normal and routine to live in fear. You were scary, our relationship was scary, but so was leaving. Which, is often the hardest part for people to understand or believe. I don’t care if they believe me or understand anymore. I know it was true and no words you can say can make me doubt that. 

You made me feel ugly. You actually said this to me once: “Maybe there is some primal part of me that doesn’t want to have sex with you because I know you can’t have children.” Do you know that I have never forgotten that? Do you know that I never will? Do you know that as much as I know that that is total BS that if haunts me. I wish I could say it doesn’t but it does. 

You wouldn’t let me do anything alone. Going out with friends, visiting family, taking photographs. You drove a wedge between me and my family. My Nana. My Nana who is now gone. Who you kept me from seeing for some of the last years of her life. You. You made sure you were the focus at all times. Your opinion mattered. What you wanted to eat was what we were going to eat. What you wanted to do in bed was what we were going to do. My voice shrunk to nothing. There was no point. 

You pushed peoples boundries. You used the same approach with them as you did with me when you were trying to date me. “Tell me a secret.” or “Lets play truth or dare.” On one of our last shoots together, the model said upfront that she didn’t want to do bottomless photos. I said ok, that was totally fine. She had a corset that you wanted her to wear for a shot and she said, “well I don’t really have underwear that go with it.” And you said “well just go bottomless then.” You hesitated. I saw it in your eyes. I said “wait a minute, I think I bought a pair of underwear we never used for a shoot, and sure enough I still had the small black underwear, brand new from a shoot that didn’t end up happening.” I remember you looked at me like you were going to kill me. You yelled at me after she left that I don’t push people, that I ruin shoots. That was it. If I had known all the shit that was going on behind my back, I would have called off shooting with you at the very beginning. 

You breaking up with me was the best thing you ever did for me. The way you did it was completely fucked up, but I do have to say, thank you for leaving me. When we went on our trip to Chicago, I was actually considering leaving you. I had for a few months at that point. I told myself, “if he’s shitty on this trip then thats it.” And you were. But I didn’t leave. 

No, instead you broke up with me. You broke up with me and then got back togeher with me at week later. In that week you managed to do an amazingly fucked up thing. You took me on a photoshoot. A photoshoot that was of the woman you had been talking to for over a year behind my back. That you were telling you loved on a regular basis. I didn’t know this during the shoot. We all hung out. We went to the movies, dancing, to watch the bats fly out from under the bridge. She was nice. It was fun. And then, she left. And boy, did you get really really mean. 

Do you know what it’s like to wonder if you’re going to be yelled at all the time? No, I guess you don’t. I do. If I misplaced my keys, you blew up. If I didn’t want to watch what you wanted to watch, you blew up. Anything. I never knew. I just waited. You never did dissapoint though I guess. I wish I could say it was like this only that week. But it wasn’t. It was all the time. In public. At the grocery store, at shows, in front of friends, in front of models. Wherever you damn well pleased. But that week, it was extra bad. I felt like I couldn’t move without making you fill with rage. So I finally said “what’s going on? You obviously aren’t happy.” And you admitted as such. I guessed it was someone else. You said “you don’t want to know.” But that was where you were wrong. Fuck you, I do want to know. And I guessed. And I was right. So, I moved into the other room. (Thank god we had a two bedroom.)

But you insisted that some things didn’t have to change. You told me, “you can still cuddle me and kiss me and sleep in the same bed with me. I still care about you.” And at first I did. I didn’t know what else to do. I would lay in that bed and cry and cry because I knew I shouldn’t be, but you asked me to. When I think about how helpless I felt it makes me ill. I am not that helpless anymore, and that was an incredibly fucked up thing of you to do to someone who was that mentally unstable and sad. To abuse that power. To have your fucking cake and eat it too. 

Finally I stopped. You suddenly wanted alone time. I could hear the sounds of phone sex coming from your room and I would put on my headphones and listen to music for hours hoping to escape to someplace else. Months went by like this. I finally went on a date. And of course, you freaked out. You swore up and down you wouldn’t. But you did. I didn’t bring him home. He just dropped me off and you ran at his car like a possesive maniac. 

You decided to go to New York. On your fucking epic bike ride for love and art or whatever. You took my grandfather’s camera with you. I asked for it back. Repeatedly. You said you would. You didn’t. And then it got stolen. Thanks for that. 

I tried to still talk to you as a friend for some fucked up reason (although not after I found out about the camera, that was pretty much the last straw). I remember occasionally we’d be talking about something and it would lead into our relationship and I would defend myself and say, “well, you were this way or that way, etc” And you would tell me, “Please don’t remind me about how awful I was to you, I feel bad enough as it is.” 

So, this is going to be a bit long but in light of recent things I have been reading, I feel I have to post something in a public forum. Highcastle Photography/Jesse Perez (Also goes by Jesse Muniz) is not a safe person to work with. Please, if you are a model and are considering working with him, message me first.

I feel genuinely sick about the testimonies from various models coming forward to talk about the things he has said and done. I wish I had said something sooner. All I can hope for now is that this might stop someone else from ending up in an awful situation. Jesse is an abusive person. He was abusive in our relationship and he acted extremely unprofessionally with the models we worked with. When we began taking photographs together, he was mostly fine. He put me down a lot in front of models and sometimes bugged people to do things more than he should but it wasn't where it is today. He is manipulative and prey's on people who he feels are weaker than him (wounded birds he called them). And he is good at it. I left the relationship feeling like I didn't matter and that I had no self worth. He told me things that I will never be able to forget no matter how hard I try. He should not be allowed to take advantage of anyone else.

After one of our lasts shoots I told him I no longer wished to shoot with him because I felt he was putting extreme pressure on a model who had already made clear what her boundaries were for the photo shoot. He blew up at me.

While Jesse never hit me, he has an extremely large temper and is unpredictable. I had several women tell me whom we worked with that he continued to bother them through texts on the side after they had already told him they were not interested in whatever idea he was proposing. Another admitted he had taken pictures when she wasn't looking with his cell phone of her and was sending them to someone else. I warned those we had worked with but I never went public. Apparently, he has gotten much worse and his abuse more extreme. It is not ok. And I can't not say anything anymore. I am a stronger person now and am in a much better place in my life and I don't want any of these things to happen to anyone else.

If you have worked with him and want to talk, if you are thinking about working with him and want to talk, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. And again, I am sorry for not doing this sooner.