Juan Romero

ART 4900

Professor Klein

Herb Ritts was born in Los Angeles in 1952. Before getting into photography, he went into the family furniture business before going to college for economics and art history. It wasn’t until he and his friend Richard Gere decided to shoot in front of an old Buick that he really became interested in photography and found success. Following this, he soon became a very well known commercial photographer and also became known for directing award-winning music videos.

This photograph exemplifies the style that Ritts would come to be known for in his career. Here Richard Gere stands in front of an old Buick with not much else going on. Portraits are meant to emphasize the subject of the photograph, which he accomplished by going with simple environments. He also mostly kept his photographs in black-and-white, which I feel also helps accomplishes what a portrait is meant to do. Instead of bright colors possibly drawing your focus to something that’s unimportant in the background, you are forced to really look at and examine the photograph before being drawn to the most prominent element. I also feel as though the black-and-white allows for more emotions to come through.

While most of his photographs were of celebrities, Ritts also took photographs like the one above. These were meant to truly emphasize and show off the human physique. The lighting along with the black-and-white creates contrast on their bodies and emphasizes the crevices on their bodies. The detail on their bodies resembles what you would expect when seeing a statue like Michelangelo’s David or other similar Greek statues. This Greek influence probably came from his previous studies in art history.

Overall, I find Herb Ritts’ photography to be very interesting. The lack of color and lack of elaborate environments or props makes it easy to identify what it is that he wants you to look at.