Herb Ritts in Los Angeles

10/17/2017

Versace Dress, Back View, El Mirage, 1990 ©Herb Ritts

Although he was one of the 21st century’s most iconic fashion photographers, Herb Ritts (1952–2002) was particularly renowned for the way he made his subjects’ bodies look. Rarely was this better exemplified than in his classic editorial “Corps Et Âmes” (meaning “Body and Soul”), which he shot for Paris Vogue in 1999, only a few years before he passed away, and which forms the centrepiece of this exhibition. At the time Ritts had long-term contracts with the grand New York titles American Vogue and Vanity Fair, and had to be granted special permission from editor-in-chief Anna Wintour to shoot this story. Working in the sunshine, on the roof of his studio in Los Angeles, he photographed San Francisco Ballet dancers Lorena Feijoo, Pauli Magierek, Yuri Possokhov and Pierre-François Vilanoba with dramatic chiaroscuro, so that they looked like they were sculpted from marble and on display in the Pergamon; the results are nothing short of spectacular.

More information at: Fahey/Klein Gallery