Record Price for A Herb Ritts Photo
The Oscars weren’t the only big show in Los Angeles last Sunday. Things were also shaking at t he Elton John AIDS Foundation Benefit Auction at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, where a photograph by the late Herb Ritts sold for $190,000. That represents a new record for a Ritts photo at auction. The photograph, “Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood, 1989,” is one of Ritts’s best-known images and an icon of the era of the supermodel in the 1980s. The print that was sol
The Oscars weren’t the only big show in Los Angeles last Sunday. Things were also shaking at t he Elton John AIDS Foundation Benefit Auction at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, where a photograph by the late Herb Ritts sold for $190,000. That represents a new record for a Ritts photo at auction.
The photograph, “Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood, 1989,” is one of Ritts’s best-known images and an icon of the era of the supermodel in the 1980s. The print that was sold measured 40 x 42 inches and was part of an edition of nine. (However, only four prints of the set were made before Ritts died in 2002.) According to a spokesman from the Herb Ritts Foundation, the print was sold to a private bidder from Europe who wished to remain anonymous.
In total, the auction raised $4.3 million for the Elton John Foundation.
—David Schonauer