Ritts, Herbert, Jr.

▪ 2003

“Herb” 

      American photographer (b. August 1952, Los Angeles, Calif.—d. Dec. 26, 2002, Los Angeles), excelled in capturing images that celebrated the beauty of the human body—especially the male body—and in creating stylish, unorthodox portraits of celebrities; his efforts gained him such renown that he achieved nearly as much fame as his subjects. His work graced not only the covers of such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar and fashion spreads in those publications but also album covers, advertisements, television commercials, and music videos; two of Ritts's music videos won MTV Video Music Awards in 1991. Ritts claimed that his success in black-and-white photography stemmed from a photograph he happened to take of his friend Richard Gere while they were waiting for a tire to be changed in the California desert. That photo was ultimately used for publicity when Gere starred in American Gigolo (1980), and both men's careers received an enormous boost. Another early success was the publication in Newsweek of a shot Ritts had taken on the set of the 1979 film The Champ. Several anthologies of Ritts's works were published, including Men/Women (1989), Notorious (1992), Africa (1994), Work (1997), and Herb Ritts (2000). Major retrospectives of his work were held in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1996–97 and in Paris in 1999–2000.

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