- Balenciaga's latest holiday advertising campaign sparked a backlash on social media.
- It featured kids holding teddy bears clad in bondage gear and was accused of sexualizing children.
A photographer said he'd received death threats over his involvement in Balenciaga's controversial advertising campaign that featured children holding teddy bears wearing bondage gear.
Gabriele Galimberti told The Guardian: "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***ing paedophile.'"
He said he took the job — his first ad campaign — because it paid 20 times more than his usual work, but had now lost out on several upcoming projects, the newspaper reported.
The campaign, which was withdrawn on November 22, was accused of sexualizing children and triggered a backlash on social media. Kim Kardashian said: "As a mother of four, I have been shaken by the disturbing images."
In a statement posted to social media, Balenciaga said: ""We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused. Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign."
Galimberti said he'd had limited input into the content of the images, telling The Guardian: "I'm a documentary photographer. I photograph what I find there."
Nevertheless, he pointed out that both himself and the children's parents, who were present at the shoot, noticed Balenciaga's nod to punk fashion, but "nobody ever mentioned BDSM."
He told the newspaper: "I can recognise if we are going too far or not, but in that occasion I trusted them and I didn't see anything so wrong."
In a statement on Instagram on November 23, Galimberti said: "I suspect that any person prone to pedophilia searches on the web and has unfortunately a too easy access to images completely different than mine, absolutely explicit in their awful content."
Galimberti told The Guardian he was sending several emails a day to Balenciaga warning them about the death threats and asking them to "do something."
Attention was also drawn to a Balenciaga campaign with Adidas that showed a handbag sitting atop a stack of documents, including a Supreme Court ruling upholding a law to criminalize images of child sexual abuse.
Galimberti emphasized on Instagram that he was not involved in the production of this image and said it had been "falsely associated" with his own series. He is taking legal action against four media outlets that conflated the two campaigns, per the newspaper.
Gabriele Galimberti and Kering, which owns Balenciaga, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.