One of the photographers who influenced me in subtle ways was Herb Ritts. I was deep into the commercial thing when I first saw his images. They confounded me at first. I thought you had to use tons of lighting equipment and huge sets and gear, gear, gear. and here this guy is taking someone on to the roof of his building and shooting with natural light? I was so drawn to the style of simplicity that he brought, that it started to creep into my work.

This will be a link rich article with lots of resources to visit to not only see some of his images, but to also read about an uncompromising artist who was able to balance art and commerce. And in the end, become one of the more influential artists of our time.

From Design Boom:

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.

ritts’ hobby soon became a self-taught career.
the photographer himself attributes his first success to shots of actor
richard gere taken on a desert excursion that ended with a flat tire.
it was the tender machismo captured in the photograph of the young
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 was building his reputation as a celebrity portraitist.

Christina Arce

Ritts delighted in the portrayal of an idealized–even exaggerated–human form. One of his best-known works, “Fred with Tires” (1984), shows an almost impossibly muscular young man clad only in jeans that sag slightly below his waist.

Ritts became well known for dramatic black-and-white photographs that focused on a single part of the subject’s body. His portrait of Olympic heptathlon champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee captures her lower torso and powerful thighs in mid-leap; her head appears only in shadow on the ground. Many of Ritts’s photographs celebrate the well-developed body. Some of his images have been compared to classical statuary because of the exquisiteness of the subjects’ form. Other photos, however, show human vulnerability: Christopher Reeve posing in his wheelchair, Elizabeth Taylor revealing her scar after brain surgery, the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking struggling against his frailty.

You can see more of Herb Ritts work at the Staley / Wise Galleries

I don’t know how reliable this link will be, but there are some more examples of Ritts’ work here. (When I visited there was SQL errors all over the page, but the images show up fine.)

Fahey / Klein Gallery has some images to view as well.

And of course there is this Wiki page.

I hope you enjoyed the links and viewing Herb Ritts’ work. In a time where I see a return to the huge, production shots (which I do certainly enjoy as well), it is nice to view some simply produced and elegantly presented work.