LONDON, ENGLAND.- On Thursday, May 22, 2003, Sotheby’s will hold a sale of Photographs which includes some of the finest names in photography, with a strong selection of images from the 1960s and 70s. Estimates range from £70,000 to as little as £300.
A highlight of the sale is a photograph by the late Herb Ritts of the actor Richard Gere, taken in 1978. The photograph is considered responsible for launching two careers, that of Ritts as a photographer and Gere as a sex symbol.
In the late 1970s Ritts was working for the family furniture business in West Hollywood. A trip into the San Bernardino desert with his friend, the then unknown Gere, was cut short by a flat tyre. Ritts said of the photograph he took at the gas station:
“I can’t remember whether I told Richard to put his arms over his head or whether I just clicked when he stretched... He was like that, a handsome kid and very sexy.”
The photograph was published in US Vogue in October of that year and soon after Gere was cast in the leading role of American Gigolo. Ritts went on to become one of the leading photographers of the late 20th century. The photograph, which is number 15 in an edition of 25, is estimated at £3,000-5,000. 
Staying with a celebrity theme is Terry O’Neill’s portrait of Paul Newman and Lee Marvin from 1972, taken in Tucson, Arizona whilst Newman and Marvin were working on the film ‘Pocket Money’.
O’Neill was from the East End of London and took up photography in his early twenties. He used a 35mm camera in order to capture the spirit of spontaneity of the contemporary fashion and music scene. He has worked for Vogue, Paris Match and Rolling Stone and over the years has produced many of the iconic celebrity portraits of the 1960s and 70s. The photograph is estimated at £300-500.
The women who inspired great photographic images are also well represented in the sale. Jean Shrimpton, the leading model of the 60s, and David Bailey’s muse and lover, was the inspiration for the quintessential sixties publication, David Bailey’s box of pin-ups, of 1965. “I want to do a book about images... Jean’s an image”, he said.
The publication’s subversive take on disposable culture means that the sets of pin-ups with the prints still in good condition are much valued. Even better are those few sets that retain the piece of thick card printed with the instruction ‘To Be Thrown Away’, of which this is an example. It is estimated at £1,200-1,800.
The sale also features the muse who in the 1860s inspired the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. 2003 is an important year for Cameron as a major touring exhibition of her work opened in February at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Taken in the spring of 1867, this image is of Julia Jackson, Cameron’s niece and god-daughter. Jackson, a noted beauty who had refused at least two proposals of marriage, and who would later model for Burne-Jones, had just become engaged at the age of 21 to the barrister Herbert Duckworth. The series of portraits that Cameron took of her niece show her as she would soon appear to her future husband.
Julia Jackson married Herbert Duckworth in May 1867. She was pregnant with their third child when her husband died suddenly from a seizure. In 1878 she married Sir Leslie Stephen with whom she had four children, including Vanessa (Bell) and Virginia (Woolf). After her death, Julia Stephen was immortalized in fiction as Mrs. Ramsay in Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. The photograph is estimated at £70,000-90,000.