HerbRitts


This page is dedicated to Herb Ritts, a great photographer who worked together with Laetitia Casta from the beginning of her career. He died Thursday the 26of December 2002 in a hospital in Los Angeles. This is a short presentation of a great man and a little part of his huge work .


	HERB RITTS a short biography. Born in 1952, Ritts grew up in southern California, and his career began in the late 1970s with informal portraits of friends in the movie industry. The photographer himself attributes his first success to shots of actor Richard Gere taken on a desert excursion that ended with a flat tire. Ritts mastered his craft and developed his personal aesthetic photographing men' s and women' s fashions, often for Italian magazines, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His sequences frequently had a narrative theme and a specific period setting. A fashion spread on jeans and overalls echoes the early Gere portrait: Ritts rented a fifties garage in Los Angeles and cast his muscular models as greasy garage mechanics. Ritts' s eye for period style and his instinct for the timing of fashion revivals enhance his ability to make pictures that fire the imagination. Based in Los Angeles, Herb Ritts was very much an image maker for our time, a photographer whose assured eye, fertile imagination, and affirmative spirit translate our culture' s dreams and desires into strong, memorable pictures. As a photographer of fashion and celebrity, Ritts has created memorable covers and spreads for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone, among others, as well as album covers, movie advertisements, music videos, and commercials. Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, The GAP, and Giorgio Armani are among his many corporate clients. Nude is the main theme of Ritts images: models, muscular men, athletes, African women, bodies that express force, sensuality and beauty, sometimes wrapped up in veils, sometimes covered by sand. The pictures of world's personalities of the movies and the fashion are also very famous: Richard Gere, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Nicholson, Madonna, Cindy Crawford, Laetitia Casta and many others. In the past decade. Ritts has also published several books that bring together photographs around a particular theme. His images capture the beauty of strength and youth. Among the many photographic books he published you should pay a special attention to: "Duo ", " Herb Ritts: Work ", "Africa " and " Men, Women ". Down under you will find some of the countless pictures he took of Laetitia Casta fro early in her career till present. *He will be missed!*
Backstage at Victoria's Secret 1997					Herb Ritts and Kd Lange

					Herb Ritts & Supermodel Naomi Campbell during filming of the Video" In The Closet" in 1992.

With Laetitia Casta & XX in a campaign for Polo					With Laetitia Casta & XX in a campaign for Polo

				Some of the most famous pictures of Laetitia was taken by Herb Ritts, like this from Rolling Stone Magazine August 1998, the first time she posed naked.

Herb Ritts pictures of Laetitia have been in the magazines all over the world for many years, the pictures at right are from American Vogue in 1995, to se more of the pictures in that magazine go here.

		Herb Ritts advice for to young people who are interested in pursuing photography Feel your surroundings. Try and develop a style. Don't get caught up in the technical side of things. Feel what is right in terms of light, subject & composition. Dare to experiment, catch a moment and above all enjoy your experiences with photography. From an interview in Freevibe.com

		Back to the 50's, in the Pirelli Calendar Herb Ritts & Laetitia Casta takes us back to the 1950's and the style used then. The pictures was shot by Herb Ritts in Malibu for the 1999 Pirelli calendar. Read the whole story here:

			Baby did a bad thing. A music movie made by Herb Ritts to Chris Isaak's the music video. Staring Laetitia Casta. You can download the movie at Zouzou.Org PS: big file.


Some really great pictures of Laetitia by Herb Ritts are these advertisings for Polo Jeans, you can read about theme here:


Want to se more of the work done by Herb Ritts? Go to Museum of fine arts, Herb Ritts work!			A great fan site for Herb Ritts: http://www.iespana.es/herbritts/