Portrait photographer Herb Ritts, 50
Posted: Friday, December 27th, 2002 4:34 pm
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 and lived in Los Angeles.
The cause was complications from pneumonia, his friend Stephen Huvane, a Hollywood publicist, said.
A photographer whose subjects ranged from Madonna and Cindy Crawford to the Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan, Mr. Ritts, like George Platt Lynes, relied on clean, graphic compositions that often portrayed models and celebrities in the visual language of classical Greek sculpture.
“He shot exquisite, iconic photographs,” said Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, a magazine to which Mr. Ritts contributed dozens of cover images.
Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Mr. Ritts grew up in a prosperous family that owned a furniture business. … Read full obituary
