Ritts was born in Los Angeles, California to a prosperous family. His parents, Herb and Shirley Ritts, owned a successful furniture business.[1] He received an economics degree from Bard College in upstate New York in 1974 and soon after returned to Los Angeles to work as a sales representative for his family's business. He came out as gay to his parents while in college; they were accepting and supportive.[2]However, Ritts started taking night classes in photography and decided to dedicate himself to the art in the late 1970s. His first break into the business occurred as a result of taking portraits of his actor friend Richard Gere. These photos gained national exposure on the covers of many magazines like Esquire and Mademoiselle,[2] and them get his first work, portray The Champ's actors by Franco Zeffirelli, successively he worked also for Andy Warhol and L'Uomo Vogue.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he worked with magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Elle, Vogue, Interview, and GQ on portraits of famous people and artistic photos of models, and worked for advertisements for companies like Donna Karan, Elizabeth Arden, Pirelli, Maybelline, Calvin Klein, Lacoste, GAP, Valentino, Lancôme, Guess, Gianfranco Ferré, Chanel, Levi’s, Gianni Versace, NEC, Ralph Lauren, Revlon, Acura, TAG Heuer, Victoria’s Secret, Absolut Vodka, and Giorgio Armani.
Subjects of his black-and-white celebrity portraits included Michael Jackson, Kofi Annan, Tom Cruise, Cindy Crawford, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso (the Dalai Lama), Ronald Reagan, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Monica Lewinsky, Tina Turner, Clint Eastwood, Antonio Rossi, Nicole Kidman, Dustin Hoffman, and Elizabeth Taylor.
Ritts proved himself to be successful in directing music videos. In 1991 two of these, Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", which featured Danish supermodel Helena Christensen and Janet Jackson's "Love Will Never Do (Without You)", won MTV Video Music Awards. He co-directed Michael Jackson's "In the Closet" video, which featured British supermodel Naomi Campbell. He also directed videos for Mariah Carey's "My All", Chris Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing", which featured French supermodel Laetitia Casta, Britney Spears' "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know", Jennifer Lopez's "Ain't It Funny" and Shakira's "Underneath Your Clothes", the latter was completed shortly before his death.
He died in UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles at 8:55 a.m. from pneumonia-related complications. He was HIV-positive[3] and according The Advocate magazine his health was precarious for a long time. He was survived by his partner Erik Hyman.
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