Ritts, Herb

American, 1952-2002

BiographyHerb Ritts was born in 1952 in Los Angeles. He was an economics major at Bard College (1974), before he started photographing Hollywood friends in the late 1970s. First achieving wide-spread notice when his photograph of Jon Voight and Ricky Schroeder on set filming The Champ was printed in Newsweek Ritts has since published photographs in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone. His fashion clients included Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, The GAP, Gianni Versace, and Giorgio Armani; and his celebrity clients included Glenn Close, Richard Gere, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Madonna, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Rodman, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tina Turner. At times, his pictures merge celebrity and fashion, as in the portrait turned clothing advertisement of a superstar singer and her daughter Gamisel en Lycra GAP telle que port par la mere Diana Ross et Tracee Ross, etudiante. In 1993, he did a series on the Maasai people and the landscape of Africa, but he is perhaps best known for his studies of the human figure, nudes in particular. Crisp lines and bold graphic statements are consistent across his work.

Ritts worked in video as well as still photography. His fist music video was Madonna’s “Cherish” in 1989. Two years later, he produced MTV Music Award-winning videos for Chris Isaak and Janet Jackson. His photographs have been seen around the world, including exhibitions at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Albany Museum of Arts, Albany; Staley Wise Gallery, New York; Gallery of Contemporary Art, Lewis and Clark College, Portland; A. Roger Gallery, New Orleans; Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago; Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco; Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles; Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto; Hamilton Gallery, London; Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome; Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan; NRW Forum, Düsseldorf; Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; Kunsthaus Wien, Austria; Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain, Paris; Daimaru Museum Kyoto; Parco Gallery, Tokyo; and Bryon Mapp Gallery, Sydney. Ritts died on December 26, 2002 in Los Angeles.