Merge?

Grace Jones

I just finished watching Smash His Camera, a recent HBO documentary on pioneering paparazzo Ron Galella. He's probably most famous for his 1970's court battles with Jackie Onassis and his getting punched in the face (suffering a broken jaw and five lost teeth) by recluse extraordinaire Marlon Brando.

The film discusses these and other recognizable or sensational incidents, using one of his most recognizable Jackie-O images as its DVD and Netflix cover. What interested me, though, was less the flash or the first-amendment arguments regarding paparazzi, and more the idea that his work is now ending up in important galleries around the world. The same work that was originally published in things like National Enquirer. 

John Lennon & David Bowie

A group of what can only be described as old school artsnobs are portrayed sitting around a table discussing how meritless Galella's work is--how it's an embarrassment to the art world that his shots are being curated at places as prominent as the Tate and MOMA. 

Galella is interviewed and followed around as he and assistants sort through a warehouse of over three million shots (digitizing them one by one). He attends The Changeling premiere, standing in a long line of other photographers, all less than half his age (which is 79) shouting "Angelina!" "Brad!" 

He doesn't really yell or go out of his way to accomplish unique shots of the red carpet. Then, after the event, he sits in his car painstakingly handwriting a letter to the world's (current) most famous celebrity couple, expressing his "regrets" for not meeting them in person and hoping they will take time out of their New York trip to meet him for a more personal photo session. He goes back and forth on how to word it, and hand delivers it to the lobby of their hotel. He must be aware this is for naught. He is aware, though, the pictures he already took aren't anything special. Looking in a  People magazine today, one photog's work doesn't stand out from the next. 

The humanity director Leon Gast shows us in Galella (his 30+ year marriage, his love of bunny rabbits) as well as the fondness with which older celebrities refer his way (in comparison with today's paparazzi) make the watcher recognize the difference in this man and the generic, desperate, invasive "paparazzi" we often think of when hearing the word.

At the same time, recognizing the difference in Galella shadowing the Kennedy's or Grace Kelly versus the throng of anonymous, buff flash throwers chasing starlets and heiresses only goes so far. If he hadn't thought about innovation when he started out, a time in Hollywood where the studios would stage photo shoots meant to look natural, the craziness surrounding people like Britney Spears and co. wouldn't exist.

Madonna

Galella realized his pictures (from shoots and red carpets) looked a lot like everyone else's and stared employing decoys and stalker-like tendencies to ensure true candid and natural shots. They, of course, were more interesting, providing the audience a real sense of what these unreachable glamazons were like at 3 am stumbling out of Studio 54, or riding bikes with their kids in the park. Galella invented that kind of celebrity documentation. Magazines and newspapers loved it. Celebrities, not so much.

Getting back to the question at hand. Is his work art? As I've said before regarding documentation of a scene, it's valid for its time; and if what was going on the pictures from a cultural standpoint sustains beyond a fad, and becomes instead an era, the photos become the gateways to the essence of a time passed.

I think this is in agreement with Gast's portrayal. He ends the documentary with footage of a young, pretty attendee at Galella's gallery opening. She poses for paparazzi, flirts, mingles. When asked about the photographs, she doesn't recognize candid, unscripted shots of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, John Belushi, and on and on. She pronounces Bardot "bar-dot" and asks if Steve McQueen was "like, a director or something?"

Crazy. He captured a time in popular culture (celebrity culture, really) that will never be available to an audience again. There weren't TMZ's and Perez Hilton's and there weren't digital cameras with ultra-zooms and Photoshop. His subjects and his technique are primitive in comparison, which is a valid collection to view.