Stylish Images Made Photographer a Star in His Own Right

Herb Ritts, the internationally acclaimed photographer known for his scintillating portraits of superstars and his glossy high-fashion spreads, died Thursday of complications of pneumonia while hospitalized at UCLA Medical Center, said his publicist, Stephen Huvane. Ritts was 50.

His images of Tina Turner, Tom Cruise, kd lang, the Dalai Lama and every supermodel worthy of the title helped define the image-conscious 1980s and ‘90s.

Designers Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani sought Ritts’ photography, which has a style void of the outlandish staging of contemporary David LaChapelle or the edginess of Annie Leibovitz. The results were iconographic -- and became cover fodder for such top fashion and culture magazines as Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Interview, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.

“Herb was not only our key photographer, he was incredibly generous,” said Vogue Editor Anna Wintour early Thursday evening. “Unlike others in our field, he was the opposite of a prima donna. He made people feel welcome.”

A native Angeleno, Ritts became as big a star as many of the personalities he captured on film: Madonna grabbing her crotch, Monica Lewinsky romping on the beach, Cindy Crawford cross-dressing and Elizabeth Taylor showing off the brain surgery scar on her nearly shaved head.

Vogue’s design director, Charles Churchward, worked with Ritts for 20 years and considered him a close friend. The two worked together last month on a photo spread for the magazine featuring United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his wife for an upcoming issue.

Churchward said the shoot had been difficult to set up because of tight security and complicated negotiations. The Annans had just arrived from Europe. “Within moments, it was like they were old friends,” Churchward said.

Later that evening, Ritts sent wine to the restaurant table where the Annans were having dinner. “That was the way it usually was on shoots; it didn’t matter who the person was.... Everybody felt comfortable. That was his secret. That’s why people always trusted him so much.”

David Fahey, a Los Angeles photography art dealer and Ritts’ exclusive gallery representative, said Ritts was stylistically unique, a photographer who created unglamorized portraits of glamorous people. “He had a very key ability in observing human beings, finding a characteristic unique to them and making it beautiful: Sandra Bernhard and her mouth, Jean-Paul Gaultier’s hair, Elizabeth Taylor’s scar. He would grasp the subject’s essence,” Fahey said. “He would create the atmosphere that allowed the perfect photograph to emerge. It was a combination of his ability, rapport and instinct.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Ritts left California for the East Coast to attend Bard College in the early 1970s to study economics. While in college, he told his parents he was gay. His sister, Christy, told the Los Angeles Times about her brother’s announcement in a 1999 interview: “When I found out, it was, ‘Is he happy? Is he OK?’ Other than that, who cares?”

Ritts eventually returned to West Hollywood and worked as a sales representative for his family’s furniture and accessories design company, often selling items to movie sets. The job allowed him to travel and teach himself photography, a hobby that later would make his a household name, unusual for a photographer.

Ritts was the oldest of four siblings, including brothers Rory and Gary. All were taught by their parents, Shirley and Herb Ritts Sr., to respect hard work -- especially while growing up in L.A., surrounded by privilege. The family lived in a 27-room Spanish-style house on 2 1/2 wooded acres in Brentwood next door to Steve McQueen. The kids occupied a wing of the house that included a 50-foot playroom. Chores for each were listed on a bulletin board and stars were doled out when jobs were successfully completed.

The Ritts clan would spend weekends at their Malibu beach house, and often, the children were allowed to spend days by themselves -- with other adults to watch over them -- at a little cabin on a Catalina cove during their summers. There, Ritts, the leader of the group (he’d later become an Eagle Scout), would work pumping gas at the dock.

But it took a flat tire to bring out the photographer in him, along with chance and connections that propelled him into the world of celebrity photography. The story goes that Ritts and his friend, a young actor named Richard Gere, whom he’d met at a potluck dinner in 1978, were driving through the desert when the Buick Le Sabre they were driving had a flat. Sweaty from changing the tire, Gere agreed to an impromptu photo session, posing in front of the car, his hands behind his head and a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“It was fun, that’s all,” Ritts was quoted about that time in 1979 when he used a Miranda camera with a 105-millimeter portrait lens. Gere was an unknown then. But a year later he was a star, and Ritts’ photos showed up in magazines in the United States and Italy.

Shirley Ritts was a classic proud mom. “Herb has a fabulous way with people and great integrity,” she told The Times in a 1999 interview.

“He’d call and tell me to turn on the television because there was something on about him and I’d say, ‘You look great.’ He’d say, ‘But Mom, how about the work?’ ”

He later took pictures for album covers and directed music videos for pop-rock artists Madonna and Michael and Janet Jackson and crooner Chris Isaak; he also directed advertising campaigns for Donna Karan, TAGHeuer Watches and Revlon. In 1991, two of his videos won MTV Awards: best female video, with Janet Jackson, and best male video, with Isaak.

His work has been displayed at studios and museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where his photographs were exhibited in a major museum for the first time, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Ritts also published several books, among them 1989’s “Men/Women” about the beauty and sensuous aura of both sexes; 1991’s “Duo,” a nude study of gay couples; 1992’s “Notorious” about his unconventional success as a celebrity portraitist, and 1994’s “Africa,” a study of the Masai people and the stark African landscape.

He is survived by his mother; his partner, Erik Hyman, and his siblings.