In this exhibition a hundred or so photographs, including many never exhibited before, present the rigorous, unusual work of one of the best-known and most celebrated photographers of the ’80s and ‘90s.
In the late ’70s Herb Ritts started photographing friends such as young actor Richard Gere, just starting out in film. Just after this his photograph entitled Richard Gere, San Bernardino (1978) was published in Vogue, Esquire and Mademoiselle. Since then Herb Ritts has succeeded in proposing a new way of taking portrait photos, in a game of representation packed with intensity and new formal technical solutions. His portraits of Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood and Nelson Mandela made a profound contribution to the legend of the person portrayed and the photographer himself. With a respectful nod to key portrait photographers of the past (Man Ray and August Sander) and to the pioneers of the “New Vision” (Alexander Rodchenko and Martin Munkacsi), from whom he inherits his particular focus on the perfection of “gesture”, demonstrating an awareness of the work of the great fashion photographers (from Bruce Weber to Helmut Newton), Herb Ritts’s style emerges most forcefully in his more personal work.
In this exhibition a hundred or so photographs, including many never exhibited before, present the rigorous, unusual work of one of the best-known and most celebrated photographers of the ’80s and ‘90s.
In the late ’70s Herb Ritts started photographing friends such as young actor Richard Gere, just starting out in film. Just after this his photograph entitled Richard Gere, San Bernardino (1978) was published in Vogue, Esquire and Mademoiselle. Since then Herb Ritts has succeeded in proposing a new way of taking portrait photos, in a game of representation packed with intensity and new formal technical solutions. His portraits of Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, Clint Eastwood and Nelson Mandela made a profound contribution to the legend of the person portrayed and the photographer himself. With a respectful nod to key portrait photographers of the past (Man Ray and August Sander) and to the pioneers of the “New Vision” (Alexander Rodchenko and Martin Munkacsi), from whom he inherits his particular focus on the perfection of “gesture”, demonstrating an awareness of the work of the great fashion photographers (from Bruce Weber to Helmut Newton), Herb Ritts’s style emerges most forcefully in his more personal work.