This is the celebrity age. We are obsessive about stars and greedily consume paper and mag pictures of them. The celebrity photograph is large business and photographers can make big money when they snap one.
The photographers wait for hours outside dives, to get an image of somebody famous coming out drunk or the worse for wear. A number of these snappers are quite disgraceful and purposely incite the celebrity into reacting forcefully. They know it'll make a photograph a picture editor will desire. Some will stalk a celeb till they get the image they want. The media builds them up and then attempts to knock them down again. Sitting up trees with a long lens to shoot a star photograph is a peculiar way to get by. Quite a lot of soul looking went on when Princess Diana was killed in an automobile crash in Paris.
Though the photographers who had been chasing her on that sad night were officially cleared of any blame, plenty of folks thought they had played a big part in the occurrences of that night. The driver was speeding thru the tunnel, having been followed at speed by photographers eager to get the final celebrity photograph of Diana and her lover Dodi. It's been let slip that some photographers took photographs of Diana after the crash and before the emergency services arrived. It is typical practice for the photographers to follow celebrities thru traffic and an identical event will often occur again. Naturally, it is not just the photographers that snap the celebs. There's a long custom, from the times of silent screen star Valentino, to publicize celebs with a photograph shoot. Many photographers have gained a rep from the celebrity photograph and some stills have passed into legend. In the 1930s and 1940s, the film studios wanted their glamorous stars to simper for the camera in beautiful dresses. Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland posed for the mag covers like Hollywood royalty.
More informal pictures came in from the 1950s, leaving us with some fantastic moments. Nobody knew how mythical James Dean would become when he was caught walking down the highways of NY, hunched up against the rain. Often , an image can become like an historic document. One such celebrity photo is the one taken of John Lennon and Yoko Ono that shows an unclothed Lennon in a fetus position, lying beside Ono.
This image was taken on the day of Lennon's murder and is terribly touching to have a look at now. The celebrity photograph is with us to stay whether the celebrity is a happy participant or the hunted quarry of the photographers.
