American photographer Herb Ritts was BOTD in 1952. Born in Los Angeles to a middle-class family, he studied economics and art history at Bard College in New York. He became interested in photography after taking a series of black-and-white photos of his friend, the then-unknown actor Richard Gere. The photographs’ clean lines and unabashed eroticism drew considerable attention, bolstering Gere’s profile and kickstarting Ritts’ career. He rose to fame photographing Brooke Shields for the cover of Elle magazine and created album covers for singers Olivia Newton-John, Madonna and Tina Turner. He went on to work for Vogue, Vanity Fair, Interview, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and Esquire magazines, photographing celebrities including Cher, Elizabeth Taylor, Vincent Price, David Bowie, Ronald Reagan, Denzel Washington, Johnny Depp, Courtney Love, Matthew McConaughey, Britney Spears, Björk, Prince, Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey. Working chiefly in black and white, he created some of the most recognisable images of the 1980s and 1990s, notably a 1992 Calvin Klein campaign with Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss. He is also credited with igniting the 1990s supermodel craze, with a celebrated 1989 group portrait of models Stephanie Seymour, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz and Naomi Campbell for Rolling Stone. Openly gay since forever, Ritts was in a long-term relationship with Erik Hyman. He died in 2002 from AIDS-related pneumonia, aged 50.