Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts (1952–2002) is best known for photographs of the human body that bring a modernist's clarity to fashion, portraiture, and the nude, and that helped define the visual language of the late twentieth century.

Ritts began his photographic career in the late 1970s and quickly established himself across both fine art and commercial practice. His work appeared regularly in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Interview, and Rolling Stone, and he was instrumental in shaping the era of the supermodel. Through his advertising campaigns for Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Versace, and many others, he brought the same rigor and formal ambition to commercial work that had long been the province of fine art photography, dissolving the boundary between the two.

Running throughout his practice was a deep affinity with the modernist tradition. His instinct for clean line, strong form, and graphic simplicity gave his images their immediate physical authority. Whether working in the studio or in the open landscapes of the American Southwest, he approached the body as form. His photographs regularly challenged conventional ideas of gender, beauty, and race, and his portraits of figures from film, music, politics, and society became defining images of their era.

His fine art photography has been the subject of exhibitions worldwide and is held in many significant public and private collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, LACMA, and the Chrysler Museum of Art. In 1996, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston presented Herb Ritts: Work, a retrospective that became one of the most attended exhibitions in the museum's history and was reprised in 2015. Ritts was deeply committed to HIV/AIDS advocacy throughout his life, contributing to organizations including amfAR, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, Project Angel Food, and APLA, and serving as a charter board member of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.