Herb Ritts

Naomi Campbell

Herb Ritts was a photographer who made an everlasting mark on photography and fashion in the 1980s and 1990s. He photographed celebrities and every supermodel worth mentioning. He preferred to shoot in black and white and just as Bruce Weber managed to produce an unearthly quality in his subjects. Adveritising shoots for designers, pictures for fashion magazines and musical videos for Janet Jackson and Madonna. He had a CV that would turn most people green of envy.

One of the first pictures of "the big five", Stephanie Seymour, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz and Naomi Campbell, that launched the supermodel phenomenom in the early 1990s.

Tatjana Patitz

Christy Turlington for Valentino

Herb Ritts is famous for his nudes of men and women, a lot of the them with homoerotic undertones. The pictures are very glamorous and there was noone who hestitated shedding their clothes for him.


Madonna was a close personal friend and Herb Ritts took a huge amount of pictures of her.

In the beginning of the 1990s Herb Ritts published the book, Duo, with pictures of the couple Bob Paris and Rod Jackson. The proceeds went to HIV and AIDS research.


Herb Ritts died in 2002 at the age of fifty of pneumonia due to that his immune system was weakened by the HIV-virus.

He carved a legacy that will be with us for as long as we celebrate the beuty of men and women.

//P.