The communications director for the city of Brookhaven was fired this week after a photographer hired by the city accused the woman of making a racist remark.
Photographer Nelson Jones told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the city of Brookhaven hired him to photograph the city’s Cherry Blossom Festival March 27 to 29. He took along two female models, one of whom was black and the other Asian.
Jones said that when Communications Director Rosemary Taylor saw him photographing the models, she told him to stop taking pictures and said, “This is not the image I want for the city of Brookhaven.”
Jones said he took the comment as a racist remark.
Taylor, for her part, said on Thursday that the incident had nothing to do with race.
“Let me say this clearly - racism had absolutely nothing to do with my interactions with the photographer and his hired models at the recent Brookhaven Cherry Blossom Festival,” she said in a statement. “It had all to do with a lack of professionalism on behalf of the photographer, a conflict of interest, misuse of city funds and money spent unnecessarily.”
Taylor said she was telling Jones that she did not want models used in photographing the event, that he should be photographing real people at the event.
In a separate email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Taylor said that she had told Jones, “This is not the image we want for Brookhaven. We don’t need models for this.” She added, “I would have said the same thing if the girls were white and blonde.”
The models, Dominique Jackson and Khamlee Vongvone, were shocked and offended, Jones said.
“We were all stunned,” he said. “It was definitely racial.”
He said another city employee then told him and the models to leave.
Contacted Wednesday by the AJC, Dominique Jackson told much the same story.
She said the communications director approached Jones as he was photographing the women, asking what was he planning on doing with the pictures.
Indicating the models, she said, “This is not the image we want for the city of Brookhaven,” Jackson said.
Jackson, 18, said she was stunned. She said she looked at the other model, Khamlee Vongvone, and whispered, “Did she really just say that?”
Brookhaven City Manager Marie Garrett issued a statement Tuesday saying that Taylor, who had only been on the job a few weeks, had been fired.
Garrett’s statement did not characterize Taylor’s actions except to say she had been terminated “after she exhibited conduct unbecoming of a city employee at the Brookhaven Cherry Blossom Festival last month.”
Garrett declined to comment further, saying the incident remains under investigation.
Jackson, the model, said she took Taylor’s remarks as racist.
“The way I felt, I wouldn’t want anybody to feel,” she said. “I was embarrassed. I felt talked-down (to).”
She said the city did the right thing by firing the communications director.
“I felt it should have been done.”
Jones, who lives in Brookhaven, said he said he was actually photographing the models for a separate promotion of his own company, and he was not planning on handing those photos over to the city.
He said he contacted Brookhaven Mayor J. Max Davis. He has asked the city for a public apology.
According to the U.S. Census, Brookhaven is 60 percent white, 31 percent black and 9 percent Hispanic.
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