Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

Ritts by Richard Gere, Herb Ritts Foundation

August 13, 1952– Herb Ritts:

“I think knowing people by first names, not by what they do sexually, is really what it’s about. Not being afraid. Fear is the enemy. I’ve always been comfortable with being gay.”

Herb Ritts is one of my favorite contemporary photographers. Photography is a medium for which I have a passion and Ritts is an American master. He is a classicist in the manner of the great George Platt Lynes and George Hurrell, but with his own particular contemporary spin on portraiture, the staged settings and color of Annie Lebowitz. I love the work of all the photographers I have mentioned, along with Helmut Newton and Bruce Weber, but Ritts was a gay man of my own generation and his pictures and subjects speak to me. Highly skilled and original, Ritts was entirely self-taught.

Ritts grew up in Brentwood with swimming pools and movie stars. As a kid, his next-door neighbor, Steve McQueen, would take him for rides on the back of his motorcycle.

“Coming from California and growing up where I did, I’ve always had a fondness for an innate sensitivity to light, texture, and warmth.”

Ritts’ images celebrate the beauty of the human body, especially the male body. He created stylish, unorthodox portraits of favorite celebrities. He was also a beauty and a star himself, achieving nearly as much fame as those gorgeous subjects he photographed.

His work graced not only the covers and editorial spreads of such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar, but also album covers, advertisements, commercials, and music videos. The videos are among the most iconic of all time: Cherish by Madonna, Wicked Game for Chris Isaac, Britney Spears’ Don’t Let Me Be The Last To Know, and ‘N Sync’s Gone.

Ritts claimed that his success with B&W photography stemmed from a single photograph he happened to take of his friend Richard Gere, mostly unknown at the time, while they were waiting for a tire to be changed at a service station in the California desert. That photograph was ultimately used for publicity when Gere starred in American Gigolo (1980) and both men’s careers received an enormous boost because of it.

Gere by Ritts, Herb Ritts Foundation

His photographs are witty, but never camp. I’ll never forget coming up out of the subway station to face that giant homoerotic fantasy of Marky Mark in his Calvins hung high over Time Square. Remember the iconic Vanity Fair cover of Cindy Crawford shaving k.d. lang?

I own an anthology of Ritts’s photographs cleverly titled Herb Ritts (2000) and even more have been published: Men/Women (1989), Notorious (1992), Africa (1994), and Work (1997). Major retrospectives of his works have been well-hung in museums around the world.

Ritts was always candid about his own gayness. He realized that he was gay while he was in college. When he came out to his parents, they were accepting and supportive. In 1993, he appeared on an NBC special The Gay 90s. After the special aired, he received many letters from gay young people about coming out. Ritts claimed that he never set out to be a role model and he stated:

“You get some of these letters and realize how important it is that there be encouragement for young gay people.”

Ritts took his last breath in December 2002, taken by the plague. He was only 50 years old. After he was diagnosed with HIV, he kept his status a secret out of concern that his mother not worry about his health. After his passing, his representatives released a short statement to the press saying only that Ritts had succumbed to “complications of pneumonia”.

Pugnacious pundits Andrew Sullivan and Michelangelo Signorile took up the issue. Signorile:

“It was downright creepy to see a Reagan-era euphemism for AIDS pop up as the cause of Ritts’ death in obituary after obituary. Once again, this is a disease that dare not speak its name.”

Sullivan wrote:

“Was Ritts’ pneumonia a freak and dangerous strain that is newsworthy in its own right, like Jim Henson’s, or was it HIV-related? And do newspapers have some responsibility to tell us which? It seems to me that when an openly gay guy dies at 50 years old of pneumonia, any decent editor would ask a simple follow-up. Or are they still colluding in the shame that some still attach to an HIV diagnosis?”

Ritts had actually been very open and supportive of HIV/AIDS charities and Gay Rights causes. Of course, with HIV, being “out” is not the same thing as being out as Poz. Ritts’ career was built on idolizing beautiful bodies which was the antithesis to the destruction of the body brought by the virus in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a photographer who brought homoeroticism to the mainstream and celebrated muscled flesh, and it would have been major news that had been sick with HIV. Sullivan’s and Signorile’s ire was aimed at the press, not the artist.

In fact, Ritts was an early and strong HIV/AIDS advocate. He helped Elizabeth Taylor start her amfAR organization, donating $1 million from the shots he took of her 1991 wedding to Larry Fortensky. He had been on the advisory board of the Elton John AIDS Foundation and generously donated photos and money to both organizations. Ritts was never afraid to have his name associated with the disease.

His best pal Gere says:

“He just went into overdrive. I don’t know if it was a sense of, ‘If I’ve got something to do, I’ve gotta do it now and leave it as my legacy.’’Or if it was’, I’m going to keep working so I don’t think about this.”

Ritts left behind his longtime partner Erik Hyman, an entertainment lawyer who is currently married to Max Mutchnick, one of the creators of Will & Grace. And he left his large body of work. His images are managed by The Herb Ritts Foundation which provides funds for HIV/AIDS research and for the advancement of photography as an art form.

Narrowing down to a few pieces of his work is not an easy task. Go to his terrific website: HERBRITTS.COM and spend some time absorbing his unique viewpoint and information about the foundation.

Ritt’s work has never been more relevant or popular. In the past few years he has had major exhibits at: Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles; Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris; Chrysler Museum Of Art, Norfolk; Palazzo della Ragione, Milan; Sejong Museum Of Art, Seoul; and this summer at Hamilton’s Gallery, London.

“Herb Ritts: The Rock Portraits” at the Chrysler Museum Of Art

Last year’s show, Herb Ritts: The Rock Portraits at The Chrysler Museum, featured photographs of the late great David Bowie and Prince, along with Bono, Britney and Bruce and other great artists that are still with us. Ritts shot these intimate portraits for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.

“You’re trying to get to one moment with one frame that eventually may speak for your generation.”

Self Portrait (1931), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Archives

August 14, 1906– Horst P. Horst is another photographer and another gay artist. Celebrating the birthdays of Horst and Herb Ritts within 24 hours is an embarrassment of artistic photographic riches.

I would give myself a grade of B- as an artist. I can draw and paint with more skill than most civilians. I can place objects in a space with smart aesthetic judgment and my gardens have been artful enough to have been published several times. Although I take many pictures and receive a bunch of Likes on Instagram, I could never be a real photographer because I would never be able to master the nuances and mechanics required for a 35mm camera and darkroom, and that’s because I am an idiot. Thankfully, because of digital photography and my trusty iPhone 5, I am now able to take photographs that are not out of focus or without some interest. Remember taking your film for processing and paying $12 to discover that only five of your 24 photos had turned out and one of those was of your thumb?

In the history of 20th century fashion and portrait photography, Horst’s contribution is among the most artistically significant and long-lasting. He had an active career from 1931-1991. He would become so legendary that like only a few other Gay Icons: Cher, Madonna, Liberace; he is known by just a single word name. Horst’s work is the epitome of elegance and effortless glamour.

In 1930, Horst met Vogue photographer Baron George Hoyningen-Huene, a Russian, and Horst became his photographic assistant, model and lover. With blond hair and a trim, muscular body, Horst was an ideal male model. He traveled to England with the Baron where they visited photographer Cecil Beaton, who was working for British Vogue. In 1931, Horst began his own association with Vogue. His first photograph in French Vogue was published that year.

Horst had his first show of photographs at La Plume d’Or in Paris in 1932. It was reviewed by gay writer Janet Flanner in The New Yorker and Horst was made instantly famous. Horst shot a portrait of Bette Davis the same year, the first in a long series of celebrities he would photograph during his lifetime. In 1932 alone he shot: Noël Coward, The Lunts, Cole Porter, and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Coco Chanel (1937) Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Archives

Horst met Coco Chanel in NYC in 1937. Chanel:

“Horst was the queen of the whole thing”.

He would photograph Chanel’s creations for the next 30 years.

After they moved to Hollywood, Hoyningen-Heune became obsessively jealous over Horst’s success which resulted in an ending to their relationship. With the Baron out of the picture, Horst began an affair with Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti. When that relationship fizzled, Horst hooked-up with Valentine Lawford, a British diplomat, in 1938 and they lived openly as a couple until Lawford’s passing in 1991. The couple adopted and raised a son, Richard J. Horst, together. This was in the 1930s!

Horst was born as Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann, in Germany. In 1941, Horst applied for US citizenship and he soon joined the US Army. He became an Army photographer, with much of his work printed in the Armed Forces’ magazine Belvoir Castle. In 1945 he photographed President Harry S. Truman, and they became fast friends. Horst photographed Truman’s wife Bess and then shot every First Lady of the post-war period, always at the invitation of The White House.

In 1947, Horst moved into a house of his own design in Oyster Bay, NY. The white stucco home was inspired by the houses that he had seen in Tunisia during his love affair with Hoyningen-Huene. It was furnished with the help of his pal Chanel.

In the 1960s, encouraged by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, Horst began a series of photos of beautiful high society types: Consuelo Vanderbilt, Marella Agnelli, Gloria Guinness, Baroness and Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Princess Helen of Greece, American princess Lee Radziwill, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Doris Duke, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. They were collected in a book with text written by Lawford.

When Vreeland left Vogue in 1971, Horst remained highly prolific and his appetite to shoot a range of subjects and locations never waned. Jerry Hall in Barbados; Duran Duran in London; Tom Wolfe, Brooke Shields and Roy Lichtenstein in NYC, they all posed for him. He shot the costumes of the New York City Ballet.

After the death Hoyningen-Huene and Chanel, Horst worked ever increasingly for Vogue’s sister publication, House & Garden, touring Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Central America. Although he continued to shoot for Vogue and have his work published in the Italian, French and British editions, the later part of his life was dedicated to writing books and exhibiting his photography around the world.

Horst’s last commercial work was shot for British Vogue in 1991. He died eight years later at his home in Palm Beach. He was 93-years-old.

In the 1970s, Horst spent most of his time traveling and photographing. He began working for House And Garden Magazine as well as for Vogue and he did cover shots of noted gay A-Listers and #BornThisDay favorites like Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent, and artist Cy Twombly.

Horst’ career reached Old Master status when the most famous person on the planet, Madonna, created her celebrated hymn to classic fashion photography with her monster single Vogue in 1990. In the video directed by David Fincher, she poses in a recreation of Horst’s most iconic fashion image, a model seen from behind, wearing a partially tied, back-laced corset made by Detolle.

The Mainbocher Corset (1937). Horst Foundation

Horst knew and photographed most of the major figures of the 20th century. He left this incarnation at his home in Palm Beach when he was 93-years-old, a nice age to make an exit, unlike Herb Ritts, who was taken away when he was way too young. Horst lived a life creating beauty while fiercely, openly gay. That is a life well lived.