Herb Ritts Quotes

Being an American is about having the right to be who you are. Sometimes that doesn't happen.

Around that time, just when I needed it, Leonard Nimoy’s Full Body Project came to me like a gift. The photographs are in black and white, and they feature a group of fat, naked women laughing, smiling, embracing, gazing fearlessly into the camera. In one, they sway indolently like the Three Graces; in another they re-create Herb Ritts’s iconic pile of supermodels. It was the first time I’d ever seen fat women presented without scorn. I

I had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18, when I had to go and work with [model and actor] Marky Mark and [photographer] Herb Ritts. It didn't feel like me at all. I felt really bad about straddling this buff guy [to appear in a Calvin Klein ad]. I didn't like it. I couldn't get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die. I went to the doctor, and he said, "I'll give you some Valium," and Francesca Sorrenti, thank God, said, "You're not taking that." It was just anxiety. Nobody takes care of you mentally. There's a massive pressure to do what you have to do.” Kate Moss, to James Fox, "The Riddle of Kate Moss," December 2012