Artist Log - Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts conveys beauty throughout his work, there are hundreds of portraits taken by Ritts where the beauty of people is shown as clear as ever, from Jack Nicholson's the Joker and Johnny Depp's Edward Scissor Hands. Ritts always manages to convey beauty through portraits or nudes, he captures the human form and does his best to uncover the beauty there. 

Here Johnny Depp is dressed as his popular character Edward Scissor Hands, Ritts has captured the character unite clearly with his iconic gloves but he has cleaned him up. His hair is made, he's dressed in smart clothing and in general is looking very clean and presentable.

This multiple imagery by Ritts, is of Jack Nicholson the Joker from Tim Burton's Batman. Ritts captures the character really well, pulling different faces we can see how crazy he is and how Ritts sees the beauty within the Joker, the destruction and chaos he can cause by pulling a smile is shown quite clearly in these images and how Nicholson portrays the character.

This is another image from Tim Burton's Batman, this is Batman himself, from this image it tells you a lot about the character, he's not turned towards he camera we can't see his face on person maybe this is show the mystery behind Batman, no one knows who he is, he hides in the shadows and has a dark past. This image already tells us a lot about character and Ritts pulls it off really well.

This image of Johnny Depp is about himself, here he isn't paling a character. Johnny Depp is just Johnny Depp and Ritts shows you how much of a normal person he is with this image, he's dressed casually and looks as if he's just living every day life. 

Herb Ritts influences me, as the way he portrays people, he doesn't need to show emotion for us to realise it's there, he shows that there is beauty all around us and in us, through the images above we can clearly see that there is all kinds of emotion within these photos. 

Ritts takes incredible photos that show the beauty of the crazy and the lives of normal people, I really enjoy his work and really think I will be able to incorporate his use of emotion into my own work.