Herb Ritts had a funny name. Whenever I hear his name, I picture his iconic fashion photographs, but I also think —- this is weird, I know—-of roasted chicken. Maybe because I always associate roasted chicken with the herbs I cooked them with, before I went vegetarian. And “Ritts” makes me think of Ritz crackers. Whatever. The mind is a weird thing.
Anyway, those distinct photographs. I feel like they defined a generation of Vogue covers and Guess advertisements. I’m going out on a limb by saying this, but he didn't quite have the artistry as the photographers whose mantles he assumed (Avedon and Penn come to mind), but even despite the commercial nature of many of his photographs, his pictures remain profoundly important in the cultural zeitgeist. This sounds obvious, but I feel the need to say it anyway: the 90s were a really fucking important decade for photography and fashion.
Now I’m really going out on a limb: his work was not only commercial, it was sometimes downright cheesy, and not in an intentional way. But the amazing thing is that despite that, it was still really good. That is a rare balance to strike, one that does not, perhaps cannot, exist today. I admit that maybe things appear cheesy or commercial to us in retrospect than they were in the moment. I don't know if I found his work cheesy when I first saw it, but I know that that photograph of Madonna dressed up as Minnie Mouse grabbing her crotch is as familiar to me as a painting of the crucifixion, a Got Milk advertisement. Maybe the point isn't that his work was or wasn’t cheesy: it's that all images which become emblems ultimately become kitsch.
Then again, why trust me? I literally opened this bio telling you that Herb Ritts makes me think of roasted chicken.
-Eugenie Dalland