The paparazzi are distinct from photographers who work in situations — posed photo shoots for magazines, red carpets and parties — that allow celebrities control over how they appear. The best paparazzi photographs emphasize fleeting, stolen moments, ideally produced without the subject knowing he or she is being photographed.
The first paparazzi emerged in post-war s Italy, where for financial reasons a number of U. Photographer Elio Sorci, for example — whose work is explored in depth in a slideshow above — patiently stalked the streets of Rome looking for unguarded moments of these stars. Once, in March , he hid out all day under a car to get a photograph of Richard Burton kissing Elizabeth Taylor outside the Italian movie studio Cinecitta, exposing their relationship to the world. One of his most notorious sets of photographs was taken one night in when fellow photographer Tazio Secchiaroli was set upon by Italian actor Walter Chiari, outraged at Secchiaroli firing off his flash gun directly in the face of actress Ava Gardner.
Sorci along with Tazio Secchiaroli, Felice Quinto, Rino Barillari and others, visually defined the energy of these times. These photographers produced pictures that stood in stark contrast to the glamorous and controlled photographs distributed by the movie studios or the staged images in popular magazines like LIFE and The Saturday Evening Post. They relished the soap-opera quality of seeing Elizabeth Taylor kissing Richard Burton on a yacht, when both were married to other people.
At a minimum, paparazzi photographs poke fun at the cultural elite, allowing audiences to revel in their all-too-human flaws. These pictures challenge us to question the true motives of those wielding outsized cultural influence and force us to examine the standards we ask our role models to meet.
Occasionally distasteful, that kind of scrutiny is nevertheless a time-honored and, arguably, an essential part of our moral and ethical development as a society. Andrew L. Mendelson , Ph. Contact us at letters time. The downside of systematic paparazzi risk has become more severe in the last 10 years. It is harder for everyone to make money. Many paparazzi have left the business: after nearly 30 years of taking celebrity photographs, Baez moved back to the Dominican Republic in the summer of , with his wife and son, to find new work.
The job of a paparazzo is riskier than most. But to some extent we all face some level of idiosyncratic and systematic risk in our careers, so we can learn a lot from these photographers. Suppose you want to change jobs from a safe, salaried support role to a sales job based on commission.
You will also face systematic risk because sales depend on the state of the economy. Systematic risk is especially dangerous. The more systematic risk associated with your job, the more exposed you are.
The livelihood of the average paparazzo is threatened by major changes in the publication industry. The photographers manage idiosyncratic risk by forming unstable alliances, but the larger systematic risk that could wipe out their jobs is harder to manage.
They could form a union and demand better terms from the agencies, but historically they struggle to cooperate with one another. And the paparazzi are not the only ones who face the risk that their jobs will no longer be viable.
One reason people seem to worry more about their economic future than they did in the past is that they sense more systematic risk in the job market. A few decades ago, most of the employment risk was idiosyncratic: conflict with the boss, a position that was a bad fit, a poorly managed company. If you lost your job, you could probably find another one just like it. Workers formed trade unions, banded together, and demanded better pay and benefits, confident that there was a need for their skills.
The job market had its ups and downs, but risk seemed to be relatively easy to manage. If you lose your job during a recession, you may never find a similar one. It is a larger trend that threatens everyone, but for paparazzi like Baez, the threat is more immediate. There is a lot of hard work and plenty of luck that goes into capturing photos that tell a story but are also still flattering images, which is always my goal.
Removing an unbecoming photograph from the Internet can be as arduous a process as securing it to begin with. And good behavior is rewarded. For example, photographers have learned to respect boundaries when it comes to children, or unpolished appearances. This dynamic has created an environment where it is just easier for everyone to work together.
No publication [or photographer] wants to risk a relationship with talent or their publicists. Yet sometimes, if a lot of money is involved, the celeb-photog relationship does revert to something more antagonistic. Last month, Dua Lipa was sued for posting a paparazzi snap to Instagram without accreditation or approval.
Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber settled complaints from a photographer in , and Gigi Hadid, Liam Hemsworth and Khloe Kardashian have also landed in hot water for sharing photographs of themselves without authorization. In an essay for The Cut , Emily Ratajkowski unraveled the claims brought against her for posting a paparazzi shot of herself. Diggs believes the pandemic has reaffirmed the symbiosis of the paparazzi-celebrity connection. If anything, it has increased.
If the image economy is the most fundamental facet of maintaining fame, street photographers remain the not-so-secret weapon for industry advancement.
No celebrity is truly seen without first choosing to be visible — and they need to be visible to remain seen. For fledgling artists or actors, their best bet is to just don a tastefully on-trend look, kiss their new beau, and hope like hell Miles Diggs is close by with a camera. Related Stories.
0コメント