Perhap, this little story from http://www.poz.com/herbritts/ about how Herb Ritts, a famous holywood photograher, started his career would inspire some of us.

“Herb Ritts, one of the top photographers of the last 50 years, was essentially self-taught. After graduating from Bard College with degrees in economics and art history, he came home to LA to work in his dad’s furniture factory—and “just picked up a camera,” recalls songwriter Bruce Roberts, Ritts’ then-roommate. “He had this little camera with him all the time. We used to go to the beach looking for people who looked great and then we would just approach them.” Like any amateur shutterbug, he also took pictures of his friends, including a little-known actor named Richard Gere. Ritts shot Gere in a beefcake pose—arms behind head, cigarette dangling from his lips—at a gas station in the desert while having a flat tire fixed. Soon, Gere’s film career exploded, and Ritts’ hot shot became an instant classic. “One thing just led to another until I…found myself working as a photographer,” Ritts once said. “I didn’t think of it in terms of a career.”

And work he did, shooting countless covers for the leading celebrity and fashion magazines of the day. He had a genius for capturing what was essential and emblematic about the famous that seemed to frame them for all time. And whether it was Madonna in Mickey Mouse ears, Jim Carrey in a mermaid tail or Monica Lewinsky in the American flag, he did it with a warmth and wit that were unique in an age of irony, when cool is king. “His total goal was to make you as sexy and beautiful as he could,” says former assistant David Jakle. “He was the absolute master of making people comfortable.” The trust he inspired in his subjects resulted in such unforgettably vulnerable portraits as Elizabeth Taylor showing off her brain-surgery scar and Stephen Hawking struggling to speak. All the while, Ritts was quietly battling the effects of HIV, including a CMV infection that threatened his eyesight. It was only in his striking nudes that Ritts turned abstract, seeing the (buff and beautiful) human body as exquisite sculpture. “Sometimes as a model, it was almost like, ‘But look at me!’” recalls Cindy Crawford. “He would just see the lines and the shapes.”

In his 25-year career, there were many milestones. He published eight big-selling books, including Duo, a celebration of love featuring two musclemen, and Africa, documenting 14 weeks with the Masai tribe. “In his house, it was his African works that were up on the wall,” says k.d. lang. He took homoerotic imagery mainstream, from his early classic “Fred with Tires” to Marky Mark served up in Calvins. He even persuaded lang to slip into an evening gown for Vogue.

Ritts died in full mid-career glory, and in the months after his death, his cover shots continued to hit newsstands. We can only guess how aging—and, yes, surviving HIV—would have enriched his vision. “He was a young, robust, energetic, vital, vibrant man who had a lot that he wanted to do. He was excited and thrilled about his future,” says his lover, Erik Hyman. “He wasn’t finished.”

Link to a gallery of his work

http://everyday-i-show.livejournal.com/195316.html

 

The distinctive style of celebrity photographer Herb Ritts made him something of a celebrity himself. Now, nine years after his death, the work of Ritts is getting its own CLOSE UP . . . as Rita Braver is about to show us:

 

Whether it was movie stars, musicians or models, Herb Ritts had a way of getting to the ESSENCE of a person.

“I can have a given situation set up, but it’s catching that moment – allowing them to be themselves – and capturing something that’s special,” he said.

And up until his death in 2002 at age 50, Ritts was capturing those special images – photographs that were surprising, amusing, moving, memorable.

Gallery: The glamorous eye of Herb Ritts

 

Whether it was a world-renowned beauty like Cindy Crawford . . .

“What I always say is the way Herb photographed you is the way that you wished you looked when you got up in the morning,” Crawford said . . .

. . . or singer-songwriter k.d. lang . . .

“I think Herb had a way of understanding how to exude the beauty within,” lang said. “I really do. He knew the balance of the soul and the body, and where the beauty was.”

“I presume there got to be a point where people really wanted him to take their picture?” asked Braver.

“Oh, absolutely,” said Charles Churchward, a former design director at Conde Nast. “You know, everybody wanted him to take their picture!”

Ritts’ friend Churchward thought it was time for a book that celebrated the man as well as the work.

“I think people want to know more about who’s behind the camera and something about them,” Churchward said. “And I think that’s what makes them last. And that’s why I wrote the book.”

Churchward said that Ritts, who grew up in L.A., introduced a new kind of glamour photography.

“Herb had been raised with light, with the beaches, with the sun,” he said. “Everybody before that was in the studio shooting and controlling everything. Suddenly he was able to take the same things outside and make people more natural and yet still have that glamour.”

Ritts’ photo of his pal Richard Gere – snapped while the two of them were waiting for a tire to be changed – helped launch both their careers in 1978.

Ritts once told CBS News, “Three months later, Vogue, Esquire, Mademoiselle had run all the images from the gas station that I’d taken, which was kind of interesting. And I got paid for it.”

Soon, he was getting photographing everyone, from Tom Cruise to Julia Roberts . . . hanging out at Vanity Fair’s Oscar party . . . and hosting his own celebrity-studded birthday bashes.

In fact Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere (who were married for 4 years) met at one of Herb’s parties.

She said Ritts was just fun to be around:

“I mean, he was a mensch,” Crawford said. “I don’t know if you know that word. But he’s just a good guy. He was a total sweetheart. He loved people.”

She still remembers the shoot for one of his most famous pictures . . . a bevy of supermodels.

“The girls, we were jokingly [calling] it ‘Naked Twister,'” Crawford said. “And I think Herb knew all of us individually, and was friendly with all of us, and that there was a comraderie.”

Another Ritts pal talked him into branching out.

“Madonna suggested to Herb that he photograph one of her videos,” said Churchward, “and he never did anything like that. But he was game to try anything.”

They made her “Cherish” video, and he shot “In the Closet” for Michael Jackson.

But it’s his photographs that will be remembered most . . . on display recently at L.A.’s Fahey/Klein Gallery, where an overflow crowd gathered to remember their old friend, and his world.

But those who watched Ritts’ work over the years are not surprised that collectors want to own his pictures, which don’t come cheap: Prices can range from $40,000 up to $125,000.

“His photographs are in a class of their own,” said lang. “You can just recognize a Herb Ritts photo from, you know, ten paces.”

k.d. lang and Ritts collaborated on a Vanity Fair cover which made a big splash in the summer of 1993.

“Where’d the idea come from?” asked Braver.

“I just wanted to do something in a barber’s chair,” Lang replied. “Oh, he goes, that’s great. And then he calls me and he goes, ‘I’m gonna ask Cindy.'”

“I’m like … ‘Cindy!'” lang laughed.

“He said, ‘Can you come to the studio? I’m shooting kd lang and I wanna use you as a prop,'” Crawford recalled. “And I had that kind of relationship with Herb where I was like ‘OK,’ you know?

“I thought Herb nailed it. And it became one of those images that people will always remember.”

There are many Herb Ritts photos that people will always remember. Some of his most beautiful are not your typical glamour shots.

Churchward described Ritts’ month-long trip to Africa where he got Massai warriors to be “fashion icons.”

“They were having a great time,” Churchward laughed. “And the fact is that he wanted to prove that he could use his eye anywhere.”

Ritts learned in 1989 that he had AIDS, but he worked up until the very end.

His last shoot was of Ben Affleck for Vanity Fair.

One last photograph by a man who never stopped trying to top himself.

“What do you think we missed by not seeing him mature as a photographer?” Braver asked lang.

“He put everything, a lifetime of knowledge and wisdom and his eye for art into that short amount of years,” she said. “Who knows what the plan is … but I can only imagine what his photos would have been like.”