Lawrence.com

Los Angeles — Photographer Herb Ritts, whose access to celebrities, even at their most fragile moments, gave him an edge in the competitive field, died Thursday of complications of pneumonia, his publicist said. He was 50.

Ritts, whose pictures helped define the image-conscious 1980s and '90s, died at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center, publicist Stephen Huvane said.

Ritts gained entree into celebrities' lives even when they displayed little glamour. He photographed Christopher Reeve, wired up and immobile in a high-tech wheelchair. In another photograph, Elizabeth Taylor sported a crew cut and the scar resulting from her brain surgery.

Ritts was born in 1952 in Los Angeles, and moved to the East Coast to attend New York's Bard College, where he studied economics.

Chance and connections propelled Ritts into the world of celebrity photography in the '70s. He got to know Richard Gere through someone who was dating the actor at the time.

A drive in the desert led to a flat tire and an impromptu photo session in a service station. The result was a photo of a steamy Gere in a white vest, his arms over his head and a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"I can't remember whether I told Richard to put his arms over his head or whether I just clicked when he stretched. And he really smoked a lot. He was like that, a handsome kid and very sexy," Ritts said in an interview for a catalog that accompanied a show at Paris' Fondation Cartier in 2000.

At the time, Gere was an unknown. A year later he was a star, and Ritts' photos were being used as publicity shots.