Why paparazzi are bad

Their image is a form of power that is quite real — even if the image itself is often not real at all. A well-crafted image must be protected from circumstances that call into question its constructed nature — its artifice.

In this light, the paparazzi threaten to shatter the seamless veneer that celebrities work so hard to maintain.

The paparazzi, that group of mostly freelance photographers who are despised by celebrities and conventional journalists alike as unethical predators, produce candid, often unflattering pictures and videos that celebrities would obviously prefer to keep hidden.

Exposure by the paparazzi is not just embarrassing but can be economically damaging, threatening endorsements or hurting box office sales. 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. The D. The debate goes back to the death of Princess Diana in a car crash.

She was in a car that was fleeing from paparazzi in Paris. While Diana's death would ultimately be blamed on her driver who, probers said, was drunk and speeding, the paparazzi have never been let off the hook for their pursuit. Despite the bad press from eight years ago, the number of celebrity photographers continues to increase as new technology makes it easier for anyone to break into a business that thrives on catching celebrities looking their worst.

And the newsstands are filled with tabloids fighting it out for more readers. Says Dan Wakeford, executive editor of In Touch Weekly magazine: "There are eight to ten magazines trying to beat us at what we do, so there's a lot of competition. I think that the lack of respect for any degree of privacy that nobody in the public would want to tolerate in terms of the behavior of photographers, the behavior of press people There are some obvious examples out there of celebrities who crave that attention, that want to be covered.

That's their right, go for it. And these paparazzis can make as much money if they want. But there are a lot of celebrities that don't. And they should have the right to be protected from absolutely abusive behavior.

SUNSHINE: You're dealing with very personal parts of people's lives, where I think there ought to be some right to privacy at some level, particularly if it involves children. To me, I draw that line in the firmest way possible. There's something weird about somebody whose living involves causing a ruckus at a shopping mall. There's something weird about literally playing chicken driving up or down the Hollywood Hills. CNN Pipeline. What's On. Art of Life. Business Traveller.

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