Gods of the Studio Light, Fahey/Klein Unites Ritts, Gorman and Rolston

Fahey/Klein Gallery opened The School of Los Angeles with a reception on October 1 at 148 North La Brea Avenue, bringing together the celebrity portraits of Herb Ritts, Greg Gorman and Matthew Rolston. The show runs through November 28.

The title borrows a term used by Charlie Churchward, the author and former Vanity Fair and Vogue design director, and the gallery asks whether the three deserve recognition as a distinct artistic movement, one that emerged in the late 1970s and matured through the 1980s and early 1990s. In the gallery’s telling, Ritts idealized his sitters, Gorman revealed them and Rolston transformed them.

The pictures read like a guest list. In 1978 Ritts photographed his friend Richard Gere, then an unknown actor, in a tank top with his arms raised. Another Ritts frame catches Cindy Crawford leaning over k.d. lang in a barber’s chair, her face lathered in shaving cream. Gorman’s sitters include Andy Warhol in 1986, Iman in 1988, Sharon Stone in 1992, Keanu Reeves in 1993 and Leonardo DiCaprio in 1994, while Rolston turned his lens on Michael Jackson, Madonna, Jodie Foster and Drew Barrymore.

Warhol appears on both sides of the camera. After finding Rolston’s photo essay on a new generation of Hollywood actors in Interview, he wrote in his diary, “Matthew is our best photographer now.” Rolston has traced the lineage himself. “Andy Warhol and Helmut Newton were the architects of the postmodern revival of Hollywood glamour,” he said.

An artist talk is scheduled at the gallery on Saturday, October 3, from 2 to 4 p.m. The School of Los Angeles stays on view through November 28.