Remembering Herb Ritts

Growing up in the 1990′s, my tween years were perhaps my most impressionable years. Before I even knew who the late Herb Ritts was, I certainly had recognized his works through mass media. I had started on a cookie trail down memory lane when I had recently spotted this fashion advertising agency, Hunter and Gatti, and their sleek but sort of content-less site, View on Fashion. Hunter & Gatti are a prime example of what fashion advertising  in 2009. Sleek, perfectly airbrushed, cold and souless.

Herb Ritts’ was a photographer who knew how to give emotional significance through simple black and white photography. Yet the way he would capture the human bodies in his lens was, and still is, quite remarkable.

I had no clue that the sensual Chris Issak’s “Wicked Games” with then supermodel (and super gorgeous) Helena Christensen was directed by him. Nor did I notice that he tended to fancy beach themed videos featuring models when he also collaborated with Madonna, Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson, until much later. Similar beach music videos have since aired on television, the one that comes to mind is Paris Hilton’s “When Stars Are Blind” although a rather poor imitation of the late Ritts’ work.