"I'm pretty selective. I generally edit the contact sheets and then do work prints. Because I have my own lab and printers, I can afford the luxury of going through the contact sheets for black-and-white, making up work prints, seeing them big, and honing them down"
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Selective isn’t just a preference here; it’s a flex of infrastructure. Herb Ritts frames editing as an artisanal ritual - contact sheets, work prints, seeing them big - but the subtext is about control. In photography, the shoot is only the first draft. The real authorship happens in the ruthless narrowing: deciding which micro-tilt of a jaw, which glint on skin, which millimeter of posture becomes the image that will stand in for a person, a body, a decade’s idea of desire.
Ritts’s language is practical, almost modest, yet it quietly maps the power dynamics of image-making. “Luxury” isn’t about comfort; it’s about ownership of the pipeline. Having “my own lab and printers” means he’s not negotiating with deadlines, outside technicians, or budget limits that force compromise. He can iterate until the photograph stops being a record and starts becoming a statement. That autonomy matters because Ritts worked in the high-stakes overlap of art, fashion, and celebrity - arenas where the smallest aesthetic decision can harden into cultural mythology.
There’s also a telling insistence on black-and-white and scale: contact sheets are intimate and forensic; “seeing them big” is where the photograph turns public, monumental, iconic. The process he describes is a slow-motion filtering of reality into idealization. It’s less about finding the “best” shot than manufacturing inevitability - making the final frame feel like it was always the only possible choice.
Ritts’s language is practical, almost modest, yet it quietly maps the power dynamics of image-making. “Luxury” isn’t about comfort; it’s about ownership of the pipeline. Having “my own lab and printers” means he’s not negotiating with deadlines, outside technicians, or budget limits that force compromise. He can iterate until the photograph stops being a record and starts becoming a statement. That autonomy matters because Ritts worked in the high-stakes overlap of art, fashion, and celebrity - arenas where the smallest aesthetic decision can harden into cultural mythology.
There’s also a telling insistence on black-and-white and scale: contact sheets are intimate and forensic; “seeing them big” is where the photograph turns public, monumental, iconic. The process he describes is a slow-motion filtering of reality into idealization. It’s less about finding the “best” shot than manufacturing inevitability - making the final frame feel like it was always the only possible choice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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