LOS ANGELES – Photographer Herb Ritts has died. His candid pictures of celebrities during their unglamorous moments are known worldwide. Mr. Ritts died Thursday of pneumonia in Los Angeles. He was 50 years old.
Mr. Ritts was working in his family’s furniture business in Los Angeles in the late 1970s when he befriended the then unknown actor Richard Gere. He took candid pictures of a sweaty T-shirted Gere stretching his arms over his head at a gasoline station in the desert.
The pictures brought Ritts worldwide attention when they were used for publicity after Gere became a film star. (voa)
Mr. Ritts also shot such well-remembered pictures as paralyzed actor Christopher Reed propped up in a wheelchair, and Elizabeth Taylor shortly after brain surgery with a prominent scar and close-cropped hair.
Ritts’ pictures were regular features of best-selling fashion magazines and record album covers.
Herb Ritts was born in Los Angeles in 1952, and grew up living and working among the celebrities of the day. In 1970, he left California to attend Bard College and study economics. He later returned to West Hollywood and worked as a sales representative for the family business selling rattan furniture, often to movie sets. This job allowed Ritts to travel and to pursue one of his interests, photographing his friends.
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A photo of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman appears on the cover of the June 1999 issue of TIME magazine. (Herb Ritts / Time Magazine) |
Ritts’ hobby soon became a self-taught career. His first success as a photographer came in 1978 when a movie industry friend allowed Ritts a brief moment on the set of The Champ. Ritts quickly posed actors Jon Voigt and Ricky Schroeder, and snapped a shot which Newsweek published on its “Newsmakers” page. But it would be the raw sensuality and tender machismo captured in the photograph of young Richard Gere—rising star of the 1980 movie American Gigolo—that launched Ritts’ career as a commercial photographer.
Ritts looks back on the late ’70s and early ’80s as apprentice years, mastering his craft and developing a personal aesthetic photographing men’s and women’s fashions. Simultaneously, he continued working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, building his reputation as a celebrity portraitist.
While working for Interview magazine in 1985, Ritts exhibited his photographs in a gallery setting for the first time. Since then his career has escalated, moving from fashion photography for the top national and international fashion magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and Elle, to album covers and music videos for Madonna, Elton John and Cher. In 1991, two of his videos won MTV awards for Best Female Video (Janet Jackson) and Best Male Video (Chris Isaak).
In the past decade, Ritts has published four books that bring together photographs around a particular theme. Published in 1989, Men/Women conveys his feeling for and understanding of the beauty and sensuous aura of both sexes; Duo, published in 1991, is a nude study of gay couples; in 1992 Ritts’ more lively and unconventional successes as a celebrity portraitist were showcased in Notorious; and in 1994 he published Africa, a study of the Maasai people, indigenous animals and the stark African landscape—a complete departure from his usual subjects.
Ritts exhibited his photographs in a gallery setting for the first time in 1985 in a three-person show titled Working in L.A. Since then his work has been showcased in galleries around the country.
