Born On This Day- August 13th... Herb Ritts

"I think knowing people by first names, not by what they do sexually, is really what it's about. Not being afraid. Fear is the enemy. I've always been comfortable with being gay."
Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts is one of my favorite photographers. Photography is a medium that I have a passion for & Ritts was a master. He was a classicist in the manner of the great George Platt Lynes & George Hurrell, but he had a contemporary spin on portraiture & yet none of the settings & color of Annie Lebowitz. I love the work & admire all the artists I have mentioned, along with Helmut Newton & Bruce Weber, but Herb Ritts was a gay man of my generation & his work & subjects speak to me. Interestingly, Ritts was self taught.

Herb Ritts grew up in Beverly Hills with movie stars as neighbors & as a child his neighbor Steve McQueen would take him on rides on the back of his motorcycle. His images celebrated the beauty of the human body, especially the male body & created stylish, unorthodox portraits of celebrities. Ritts gained the same sort of renown as his subjects & he achieved nearly as much fame as those he photographed.

His work graced not only the covers & photo spreads of such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Elle, & Harper’s Bazaar, but also album covers, advertisements, television commercials, & music videos.. Ritts claimed that his success in black & white photography stemmed from a photograph he happened to take of his friend Richard Gere while they were waiting for a tire to be changed in the California desert. That photo was ultimately used for publicity when Gere starred in American Gigolo (1980), & both men’s careers received an enormous boost.

Several anthologies of Ritts’s works have been published: Men/Women (1989), Notorious (1992), Africa (1994), Work (1997) & Herb Ritts (2000). Major retrospectives of his work were held in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1996–97 & in Paris in 2000.

Ritts was always candid about his own sexuality. He realized that he was gay while he was in college. He soon came out to his parents, who were accepting & supportive. In 1993, he appeared on an NBC special- The Gay 90s. After the special aired he received many letters from gay young people about coming out. Ritts claimed that he never set out to be a role model & said- “you get some of these letters & realize how important it is that there be encouragement for young gay people.”

Ritts died in LA from HIV pneumonia-related complications in December 2002. He was only 50 years old. He left behind his longtime partner Erik Hyman, an entertainment lawyer, & his work.

Narrowing down a few pieces of his work is not an easy task. Go to his website: Herb Ritts & spend sometime absorbing his unique viewpoint.

Richard Gere: "Some photographers embalm their subjects, but he enlivened them."

Born On This Day- August 8th... Randy Shilts

Randy Shilts was gutsy, brash & unforgettable. He was a brave & pioneering gay journalist. He was the first openly gay reporter with a “gay beat” for major USA newspaper- the San Francisco Chronicle. He was among the first to bring real attention to a new series of illnesses that were causing gay men to die in the early 1980s.

I purchased & read each of his books as they were published. They remain some of the most important books & the best chronicle of American Gay History at the end of the 20th century: The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life & Times of Harvey Milk (1982), And the Band Played On: Politics, People, & the AIDS Epidemic (1987), & Conduct Unbecoming: Gay & Lesbians In The U.S. Military: Vietnam to the Persian Gulf (1993). And The Band Played On became an award winning, powerful & critically lauded film for HBO, directed by Roger Spottiswoode & starring: Alan Alda, Matthew Modine, Lily Tomlin, Ian McKellen. Steve Martin, B.D. Wong, Richard Gere, David Marshall Grant, Anjelica Huston, Richard Jenkins, & Swoozie Kurtz, most of whom worked for scale to be part of the project.

His books read like finely crafted fiction; Shilts’ greatest achievement as a writer was that he brought novelistic skills to the practice of journalism. All 3 of his books have compelling narratives & vividly detailed characters.

Shilts received the formal diagnosis that he was infected with HIV on the day he finished the manuscript for And Band Played On. As Shilts wrote his last book, about gays in the military- Conduct Unbecoming, he dictated the final chapter of that book from a hospital bed & it was published in 1993 at almost the same time President Bill Clinton took aim at anti-gay discrimination in the armed services. Think of how he would have continued to chronicle the struggle of gay people & imagine his reporting of Prop 8 & the inevitable rise of the cause of Marriage Equality & 21^st century LGBTQ issues like bullying.

In 1992, Shilts' older brother Gary performed the commitment ceremony that joined him to Barry Barbieri, a man 20 years his junior, & the primary beneficiary of his estate.

Perhaps because Shilts remains controversial among some gays, there is no monument to him. There is is no street named for him, as there are for other San Francisco writers Jack London, Jack Kerouac or Dashiell Hammett. He isone of Gay History’s real heroes, with an effect on the gay community as important as Harvey Milk. Both were immensely important. Where's the street, building or holiday named after Shilts?

"HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego & vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells & a little less character."

A toast to you Randy, on your 61st birthday.

Born On This Day- February 29th... Pedro Pablo Zamora

I was still in my 30s when the San Francisco Real World premiered in 1992 on MTV, I smartly stopped watching The Real World, or for that matter, MTV, when I turned 40. The Real World was the start a standard fir reality TV shows: It threw together rednecks, party girls, virgin Christians, substance abusers, goody-2-shoes, gay people & douchey bike messengers & allowed them to fight their tiny culture wars on TV.

Through the 27 seasons, Pedro Zamora, of The Real World: San Francisco in 1994, its 3rd season, continues to make an impression.

Zamora was a Cuban American gay man who died from complications from HIV the day after the San Franciscoseason finale aired. Zamora was diagnosed with HIV in his junior year of high school, & by age 19, he had embarked on a career as an AIDS educator. When the opportunity arose to audition for a spot on The Real World, he saw it as a chance to further his message of AIDS awareness.

The young HIV educator, he was just 22 when he died, was always on message. He brought a scrapbook of his education work to show his cast mates, immediately lectured them on HIV transmission & took them along on his speaking gigs. He & his boyfriend, Sean Sasser, had a tear-jerking commitment ceremony before the cameras. Anyone who saw that season's The Real World cannot get Zamora's story out of their minds.

2009’s- Pedro is a very moving biopic by MTV &  The Real World creators & written by Dustin Lance Black who won an Oscar for Milk. He was still in the closet at the time. The film also includes a reenactment of phone call of appreciation to Zamora & his family. Clinton also introduces the film. In 2010, Pedro writers Dustin Lance Black & Paris Barclay were nominated for a Writers Guild Award. Pedro also received a Humanitas Prize nomination & a GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding TV Movie or Mini-Series at the 21st GLAAD Media Awards.

Once The Real Worldseason ended filming, & Zamora fell fatally ill after taping, cast members Pam Ling & Judd Winick rushed cross-country to his side. Their friendship deepened & together they embraced their friend's cause. A year after they moved out of the spotlight, they moved in together. Pam became an M.D. specializing in HIV health issues & Judd writes Green Lantern for DC Comics. They are now married & living in San Francisco. Armistead Maupin spoke at theor ceremony.

Winick’s graphic novel, Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, & What I Learned, was published in September 2000. It was awarded 6 American Library Association awards, was nominated for an Eisner Award, & won Winick his first GLAAD award.

In his short life, Pedro Zamora did much to advance  awareness & understanding of HIV, as well as to advance a generation's acceptance of homosexuality. His partner- Sean Sasser is a pastry chef in Portland & my neighbor. When he married Zamora in a commitment ceremony at the Real World house, the audience was not horrified, as they might have been just a decade earlier, but charmed. The romance was,15 years later, nominated for "Favorite Love Story" out 26 seasons of cast members dating & falling in love. Zamora both educated & inspired a generation.

 
Zamora would have been 12 years old, or 40 years old today. No matter how you count it, it would be a been a better world if he was still with us.