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Herb Ritts: The Golden Hour: A Photographer's Life and His World
The definitive book on the life of the legendary photographer Herb Ritts, with never-before-seen images and interviews with his closest confidants. At the time of his death in 2002, Herb Ritts was among the most celebrated photographers in celebrity portraiture, fashion, and music videos. During a career that spanned nearly thirty years, he was virtually in a league of his own in terms of style and productivity. Ritts was Hollywood royalty, as were his closest friends and the subjects he photographed. The Golden Hour reveals for the first time the personal aspects of Ritts’s world, work, and legacy. The book includes many never-before-seen photographs and scores of interviews from business associates, curators, staff, lovers, and family, such as Cindy Crawford, Elton John, Anna Wintour, Madonna, Calvin Klein, and Christopher Buckley (Ritts’s college roommate). The book includes images from Ritts’s personal archive—behind the scenes at photo shoots, parties, travels, intimate portraits, and moments with friends—along with notes and contact sheets that show how ideas became his best-known iconic images.
- GenresPhotographyBiographyArt
320 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 24, 2021
In 2017 I was in Milan and went to se the Herb Ritts retrospective, hosted by a famous gallery in the centre of the city. There were a total of five visitors during my stay and two of them - possibly a clandestine couple - spent their time necking...
Such is the fickle nature of fame. A mere 15 years after his death and in the capital of Italian fashion and design, Ritts was but a footnote in history. A sad contrast with Ritt's exhibitions held in the US, which attracted huge crowds. But that was at heigh of his fame, during the 90s, when the world was celebrating the supermodels' "culture", which Ritts contributed to create.
On the positive side, this book contains many of Ritt's famous photos and lots of more intimate shots with family and friends. It also covers his whole life, narrated by his dysfunctional family and his many friends and boyfriends. Unfortunately, the chronology is often confused and some of the comments are just fragments that don't mean much.
Personally, I would have preferred a more cohesive structure, perhaps grouping all the narrative from each single contributor or a tighter chronological order. What we learn about Ritts is that he had a complex, contradictory personality. His mother was an extravagant (read: "difficult") pluri-divorced decorator, who produced five children; the first with an ex-husband was abandoned, while the four Ritts children grew up as privileged Californian kids.
Steve McQueen was one of his neighbours and Herb's ease with celebrities may be explained by his early exposure. Even better, Richard Gere was one of his friends and they both contributed hugely to each other's career. Ritts loved mingling with the rich and famous and worked his way up the Vogue ladder.
In the late 80s he photographed Madonna and each of the "supermodels", alone and together and short after the obsession with celebrity exploded. Not happy with his fashion photos Ritts tried, more or less successfully, portraits and a book about Africa.
Many photographers are quoted as having influenced him, the elephant in the room being Mapplethorpe who is never - EVER - mentioned. Both men had a personal interest in muscular, male bodies, preferred black & white, had a taste for classic sculpture, etc... Yet, none of Ritts's biographers acknowledge the influence. My personal opinion is that Ritts never quite made it to Mapplethorpe levels of perfection, maybe because he spread himself too thin with fashion, commercials, videoclips and more. Besides, none of his portraits ever became iconic, his best work being fashion and commercials.
The book wraps up with the chronicle of his last years, filled with the dreaded HIV infection. To his discredit, for a long time Ritts did not inform any of his lovers about him being positive. Even his co-workers had to guess his state, giving his physical deterioration, but were not informed until very late.
According to himself, his photos always have something off - and I agree with him. For instance, the "Versace dress" in the desert has the model twisted asymmetrically, with her back to the camera, dwarfed by a huge dark cloth billowing over her head; "Djimon with octopus" is cringeworthy; his portrait of Glenn Close is grotesque; he tried too hard to merge bodies with shells, shrubs and natural elements; etc...
It is as if he tried all his life to reproduce the fortunate mix of raw sensuality, light and slightly asymmetrical pose of Richard Gere in the 1977 St. Bernardino session, never quite succeeding.
Such is the fickle nature of fame. A mere 15 years after his death and in the capital of Italian fashion and design, Ritts was but a footnote in history. A sad contrast with Ritt's exhibitions held in the US, which attracted huge crowds. But that was at heigh of his fame, during the 90s, when the world was celebrating the supermodels' "culture", which Ritts contributed to create.
On the positive side, this book contains many of Ritt's famous photos and lots of more intimate shots with family and friends. It also covers his whole life, narrated by his dysfunctional family and his many friends and boyfriends. Unfortunately, the chronology is often confused and some of the comments are just fragments that don't mean much.
Personally, I would have preferred a more cohesive structure, perhaps grouping all the narrative from each single contributor or a tighter chronological order. What we learn about Ritts is that he had a complex, contradictory personality. His mother was an extravagant (read: "difficult") pluri-divorced decorator, who produced five children; the first with an ex-husband was abandoned, while the four Ritts children grew up as privileged Californian kids.
Steve McQueen was one of his neighbours and Herb's ease with celebrities may be explained by his early exposure. Even better, Richard Gere was one of his friends and they both contributed hugely to each other's career. Ritts loved mingling with the rich and famous and worked his way up the Vogue ladder.
In the late 80s he photographed Madonna and each of the "supermodels", alone and together and short after the obsession with celebrity exploded. Not happy with his fashion photos Ritts tried, more or less successfully, portraits and a book about Africa.
Many photographers are quoted as having influenced him, the elephant in the room being Mapplethorpe who is never - EVER - mentioned. Both men had a personal interest in muscular, male bodies, preferred black & white, had a taste for classic sculpture, etc... Yet, none of Ritts's biographers acknowledge the influence. My personal opinion is that Ritts never quite made it to Mapplethorpe levels of perfection, maybe because he spread himself too thin with fashion, commercials, videoclips and more. Besides, none of his portraits ever became iconic, his best work being fashion and commercials.
The book wraps up with the chronicle of his last years, filled with the dreaded HIV infection. To his discredit, for a long time Ritts did not inform any of his lovers about him being positive. Even his co-workers had to guess his state, giving his physical deterioration, but were not informed until very late.
According to himself, his photos always have something off - and I agree with him. For instance, the "Versace dress" in the desert has the model twisted asymmetrically, with her back to the camera, dwarfed by a huge dark cloth billowing over her head; "Djimon with octopus" is cringeworthy; his portrait of Glenn Close is grotesque; he tried too hard to merge bodies with shells, shrubs and natural elements; etc...
It is as if he tried all his life to reproduce the fortunate mix of raw sensuality, light and slightly asymmetrical pose of Richard Gere in the 1977 St. Bernardino session, never quite succeeding.
October 25, 2010
Who didn’t love Herb Ritts? The Brentwood boy cum fashion photographer to the stars was loved and revered by everyone he came in contact with before his untimely passing, the day after Christmas in 2002.
In this, the first published book on the subject in the new millennium, Ritts associate (and former Vogue and Vanity Fair art director) Charles Churchward has painstakingly assembled both an oral and photographic history covering not just the career, but the life of his beloved friend. In assembling detailed recollections from a large cadre of friends – songwriter Bruce Roberts, family friend Bobby Shriver, photographer Annie Liebowitz and numerous others – Churchward has succeeded in creating a vivid verbal portrait of Ritts’ passionista existence literally from inception to denouement. From his early boyhood years growing up in a family whose father ran a furniture company and a commanding, interior designer mother, to his early break shooting with his then twenty-something buddy Richard Gere, to an illustrious career creating trademark sessions with Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Madonna and many more, the evolution of both the Ritts lifestyle and photographic style is on display for all to see.
Given an already ample number of photo books by Ritts, it is refreshing to see the evolution of the life story; the story of the boy turned man, the development of a fascination that began with a Brownie camera on Catalina vacations and turned into a career of global celebrity in its own right, the unrelenting personality and the evolving issues surrounding his own sexuality, the story of a man who had completed the first phase of his luminous career and was beginning phase two (his Africa expedition being the gateway to a new Ritts style) when he was caught short by an untimely death.
Inspired by his mentor Bruce Weber, Ritts was one of the few photographers who treated men and African-Americans the same way women were treated for years – in sensual and provocative images that had here-to-fore been barely explored. Though he never quite appeared to achieve the ultimate peak of his predecessors in the art world (Newton, Steglitz, Ed Weston) Ritts was well on his way at the time of his passing. The extensive personal recollections of those who knew him best create a sunlit window into the man behind the pictures and this collection serves as a fitting tribute to the man that brought the 80’s and 90’s worlds of fashion and art into sharp focus.
In this, the first published book on the subject in the new millennium, Ritts associate (and former Vogue and Vanity Fair art director) Charles Churchward has painstakingly assembled both an oral and photographic history covering not just the career, but the life of his beloved friend. In assembling detailed recollections from a large cadre of friends – songwriter Bruce Roberts, family friend Bobby Shriver, photographer Annie Liebowitz and numerous others – Churchward has succeeded in creating a vivid verbal portrait of Ritts’ passionista existence literally from inception to denouement. From his early boyhood years growing up in a family whose father ran a furniture company and a commanding, interior designer mother, to his early break shooting with his then twenty-something buddy Richard Gere, to an illustrious career creating trademark sessions with Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Madonna and many more, the evolution of both the Ritts lifestyle and photographic style is on display for all to see.
Given an already ample number of photo books by Ritts, it is refreshing to see the evolution of the life story; the story of the boy turned man, the development of a fascination that began with a Brownie camera on Catalina vacations and turned into a career of global celebrity in its own right, the unrelenting personality and the evolving issues surrounding his own sexuality, the story of a man who had completed the first phase of his luminous career and was beginning phase two (his Africa expedition being the gateway to a new Ritts style) when he was caught short by an untimely death.
Inspired by his mentor Bruce Weber, Ritts was one of the few photographers who treated men and African-Americans the same way women were treated for years – in sensual and provocative images that had here-to-fore been barely explored. Though he never quite appeared to achieve the ultimate peak of his predecessors in the art world (Newton, Steglitz, Ed Weston) Ritts was well on his way at the time of his passing. The extensive personal recollections of those who knew him best create a sunlit window into the man behind the pictures and this collection serves as a fitting tribute to the man that brought the 80’s and 90’s worlds of fashion and art into sharp focus.
July 15, 2012
One of my favorite photographers. The book was filled with not only his pictures but, family ones as well. Fascinating.
December 17, 2014
One of my favorite biographies
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews