Herb Ritts, the photographer whose glorifying images of the well known helped to further mythologize celebrity in the 1980’s and 90’s, died yesterday in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 50 years old and lived in Los Angeles. The cause was complications from pneumonia.
Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Mr. Ritts grew up in a prosperous family that owned a furniture business. After graduating from Bard College in upstate New York with a degree in economics in 1975, he returned to Los Angeles to work for his family’s company but was sidetracked when he started taking adult-education classes, in photography.
One day in 1979, while waiting for a tire to be changed, he took pictures of a young ac tor friend he was driving around with. The actor was Richard Gere, and the pictures, ultimately published in various national magazines, served as the catalyst for Mr. Ritts’s career as a portraitist.
"His purpose was always to make you look good," Mr. Gere said , "He had an extremely elegant aesthetic. Some photographers are working very hard to be elegant, but to Herb it came effortlessly. Some photographers embalm their subjects, but he enlivened them."
A photographer whose subjects ranged from Madonna and Cindy Crawford to the Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan, Mr. Ritts relied on clean, graphic compositions that often portrayed models and celebrities. Mr. Ritts had recently shot a series of portraits for Vogue, including ones of Mr. Annan, the United Nations secretary general, and Marion Jones, the Track Star, all of which will appear in the magazine’s February issue.
