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Lot Essay
Herb Ritts s’est fait un nom dans les années 1980 dans les domaines connexes de la photographie de mode et du portrait de célébrités. Il avait pour particularité de travailler avec la lumière disponible, qui, pour ce résident de Los Angeles, n’était autre que le magnifique soleil de Californie. La ville et les paysages alentours deviennent son studio en plein air parfait pour ses clichés – des clichés pour lesquels il puise dans une certaine tradition californienne du portrait englobant les nus féminins exubérants d’André de Dienes et les figures masculines musclées immortalisées par Bruce Bellas, dit Bruce de Los Angeles.
Ritts utilise les vêtements comme éléments graphiques dans la composition d'images qui célèbrent avant tout la beauté du corps, une approche parfaitement illustrée dans le présent cliché, dans lequel une silhouette tonique et élancée est mise en valeur par la stylisation extrême et saisissante d’une robe Versace, non sans rappeler les audacieuses abstractions minimalistes d’Ellsworth Kelly.
Herb Ritts made his reputation in the 1980s in the related arenas of fashion photography and celebrity portraiture. His forte was to work with available light, and what distinguished his situation was that his home was Los Angeles and the light available to him was the glorious sunshine of California. He had at his disposal, within the city and in the landscapes beyond, the perfect daylight studio in which to make his images – images for which he drew on a certain Californian tradition of plein-air figure photography that embraced the exuberant female nudes of André de Dienes and the well-muscled male figures captured by Bruce Bellas, known as Bruce of Los Angeles.
Ritts used clothes as graphic elements within images that first and foremost celebrate the body beautiful, an approach perfectly exemplified in the present study in which a sleek, toned figure is dramatised by the extreme and striking stylisation of a Versace dress, calling to mind such reference points as the bold, reductive abstractions of Ellsworth Kelly.
Ritts utilise les vêtements comme éléments graphiques dans la composition d'images qui célèbrent avant tout la beauté du corps, une approche parfaitement illustrée dans le présent cliché, dans lequel une silhouette tonique et élancée est mise en valeur par la stylisation extrême et saisissante d’une robe Versace, non sans rappeler les audacieuses abstractions minimalistes d’Ellsworth Kelly.
Herb Ritts made his reputation in the 1980s in the related arenas of fashion photography and celebrity portraiture. His forte was to work with available light, and what distinguished his situation was that his home was Los Angeles and the light available to him was the glorious sunshine of California. He had at his disposal, within the city and in the landscapes beyond, the perfect daylight studio in which to make his images – images for which he drew on a certain Californian tradition of plein-air figure photography that embraced the exuberant female nudes of André de Dienes and the well-muscled male figures captured by Bruce Bellas, known as Bruce of Los Angeles.
Ritts used clothes as graphic elements within images that first and foremost celebrate the body beautiful, an approach perfectly exemplified in the present study in which a sleek, toned figure is dramatised by the extreme and striking stylisation of a Versace dress, calling to mind such reference points as the bold, reductive abstractions of Ellsworth Kelly.