Have you ever wondered about how did the entire ‘Paparazzis’ thing started?

How, from one day to another, they

appeared and nowadays this is called a job? First of all, you have to know what does ‘Paparazzi’ means. According to the
Cambrigde Dictionary, the pararazzis are the photographers who follow famous people everywhere they go in order to
take photographs of them for newspapers and magazines. Now, you might wonder where the word ‘Paparazzi’ came
from. Well, in 1960, Federico Fellini coined the term 'paparazzo' which is the photographer colleague of the protagonist in
his film La Dolce Vita. Fellini himself said: "Paparazzo suggests to me a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging."

In the 60’s, things were pretty much different. For instance, when Jonh F. Kennedy was president, there were a lot of
rumors about him. The most known is that he was an adulterer and he was cheating his wife with the beautiful Marilyn
Monroe. In order to finish these rumors, he sent a friend and former journalist to “tell the editors… that it’s just not true.”
Apparently, it seemed to work at that time. Currently, the mainstream has become very important and thanks to that,
paparazzi agency has arise and became an important factor in this industry since lots of famous people are living in USA.
Hollywood, actually, is the center of both, famous people and paparazzis.

Paparazzi images have played a decisive role in some of major circulationbattles across the print media and their
importance in the strategies of competition is reflected in the extraordinary prices paid for highly sough.after images. The
fundamental strength of the market demand for images of celebrity across formats and new genres means that they are
highly valued by cirtually every medium and distribution plattaform.

If a current president is seem in suspicious acts, the paparazzi would not stop until they destroy him

Anyway, the difference between a common photographer and a paparazzi is that

The Paparazzi Business

Before John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the handsome, young president had a public image as
a doting father and as the man who called Americans to public service. In his private life, he was a
serial adulterer. Historians have all but confirmed Kennedy’s involvement with women ranging from
Marilyn Monroe to two White House interns who skinny dipped in the presidential pool and flew on
Air Force One so that, as Caitlin Flanaganputs it in The Atlantic, “the president could always get laid if
there was any trouble scaring up local talent.”

If a current president acted like Kennedy, reporters from every paper would seize on rumors until his
presidency ended in shame. But the early 1960s were a different time; the American public remained
ignorant of Kennedy’s affairs because no one reported on them. In his biography of Kennedy, Robert
Dallek writes that Kennedy "remained confident that the mainstream press would not publicize his
womanizing." Even more incredible than the press’s self-imposed censorship is Dallek’s observation
that when gossip columns began speculating about JFK and Marilyn, he sent a friend and former
journalist to “tell the editors… that it’s just not true.” Apparently it got results.

After the JFK assassination, Jackie Kennedy lived in New York. She remained in the public eye as a
fashion icon and as the widow of the fallen president, but she harbored no great secrets. Nevertheless,
a Bronx resident by the name of Ron Galella would not leave her alone. Galella followed Jackie
Kennedy Onassis incessantly, snapping pictures of her around the city and leading the former first
lady to go to court to win a (largely ineffective) restraining order against Galella. 

Today famous figures endure the Galella treatment on a regular basis. Galella is the progenitor of the
modern paparazzo who takes pictures of celebrities “doing things,” as he puts it, which is now so
common that photographers struggle to get a good picture of Brad Pitt grabbing takeout because so
many other paparazzi are crowding him to get a shot.
The proliferation of media devoted to covering famous figures, omnipresent paparazzi, and a change
in the culture of how we treat celebrities -- from adoring them from a distance to seeking both
familiarity and the exposure of all their secrets -- has led to an increase in the price of fame. Whereas
Kennedy could trust the press not to expose his affairs, modern celebrities must design their lifestyle
around avoiding cameras whenever they eat out. Over time, the public has come to expect a certain
amount of transparency around famous people's personal lives. We are all paparazzi now.

A Paparazzo’s Guide

Paparazzi work at the intersection of free speech and indifference to the norms of polite society.
Anyone sufficiently famous is considered a “public figure” who in some ways waives the right to
privacy by pursuing a public-facing career. This means paparazzi have the right to take a picture of a
celebrity in public, which is why so many celebrity magazines are filled with pictures of famous people
walking to their car or down the street. Some celebrities, like Jackie Onassis, have fought off
persistent paparazzi by arguing that their tactics constitute harassment, and lawmakers in some areas
have passed laws to prevent photographing celebrities’ children, given their status as minors. In
general, however, nothing prevents paparazzi from following and photographing a celebrity like an
FBI surveillance team. 

At the highest levels of the cat and mouse game between paparazzi and celebrities, each side has a
number of go-to tactics. The default paparazzi strategy is standing at the entrance to restaurants and
clubs frequented by the rich and famous and photographing whoever turns up. Paparazzi make their
own luck by befriending (and paying) waiters and bellhops to form celebrity spotting intelligence
networks. In Galella’s day, paparazzi often jumped out from behind bushes or whistled to get
“reaction shots”; now paparazzi flock to famous figures in such numbers that they work together,
forming a “triangle” by surrounding the celebrity on three sides so that someone will get a shot no
matter which direction he or she looks. 

For hot celebrities, evasion goes far beyond wearing a hat and sunglasses. In The Atlantic, David
Samuels writes:

Brad Pitt is a master at playing games. One of his favorite tricks is to drive onto the Warner Bros. lot
and leave the photographers guessing which of the studio’s many exits he will choose for his
departure.
As a result, the most lucrative photos require an incredible amount of effort to capture. At the height
of Britney Spear’s notoriety, Samuels estimates that 30-45 paparazzi followed her every day.
Paparazzi spend enough time waiting outside celebrities’ homes, hoping to catch a celebrity couple
fighting or driving home drunk, that it has its own name: “door-stepping.” In Spears’s case, one
firm “logged over 40,000 man-hours watching Britney,” which paid to the tune of $6 million worth of
photos, including one of the emotionally turbulent singer shaving off her hair. 

Some of the “best” images also skirt the borders of legality; Galella plucked leaves from Katharine
Hepburn’s hedge and spent several days in a warehouse near Elizabeth Taylor’s yacht to get clean
shots. Paparazzi agencies have already started experimenting with using drones to take photos and
footage of celebrities and their real estate; powerful zooms can also nab candid celebrity photos, like
when a paparazzi took a photo of Kate Middleton, the wife of Prince William, sunbathing topless
from an estimated kilometer away.

To reduce the incentives for dogged paparazzi, some celebrities hawk or release highly prized photos.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt sold several tabloids photos of their newborn twins for$14 million (which
they donated to charity). In 2000, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas sold their wedding
photos for over $1 million. Despite the sale -- and security precautions that included sweeping the
hotel for video equipment, keeping the location a secret until the last minute, and hand delivering
coded invitations -- a freelancer still took and sold photos of the event, resulting in a lawsuit by the
couple. 

Many paparazzi defend their invasive occupation by saying that it benefits celebrities’ careers. There’s
truth to this. Managers and publicists regularly maintain relationships with paparazzi, tipping them
off to a star’s schedule to maintain their client’s celebrity by keeping them in the public eye. Of course,
the absence of such relationships does not deter the photographers. For famous figures, pursuit by the
paparazzi is an occupational hazard that is greatly reduced but not eliminated by living outside Los
Angeles, New York, and other cities where celebrities congregate. 

In an interview, British actress Sienna Miller acknowledged that it is hard to sympathize with wealthy

celebrities, but refuted the claim that she benefitted from the exposure: "My career suffered massively
because I had a reputation for being a very tabloid person.” Since winning a harassment case against
many of England’s largest paparazzi agencies, Miller is no longer followed by photographers. She won
the judge over by showing footage she took of the paparazzi as “they routinely tried to cause accidents,
swore at her and backed her into dark street corners.”

Three Stages of Paparazzi

Since the coining of the term paparazzi in 1960 (Paparazzo was the name of a news photographer in
the Italian film La Dolce Vita), the paparazzi industry has gone through three overlapping stages.

In the first, paparazzi were lone freelance photographers like Ron Galella. The job was both esteemed
and despised. Men like Galella, who says that he considered Jackie Onassis both his favorite subject
and his girlfriend, established the sleazy reputation of paparazzi. At the same time, his photos have
become iconic, and a number of art museums have hosted exhibits of Galella’s photographs. 

Paparazzi do still operate as freelancers, selling photographs to gossip rags and mainstream media
alike, although there are now so many that it’s nearly impossible to achieve the fame of their
forebearers like Galella and Rino Barillari. A Times article puts the price for an average photo at
several hundred dollars, with an especially productive paparazzi earning $10,000 a month. One
paparazzo, who tells Forbes that photographers usually lowball their earnings to dissuade amateurs
from competing with them, says $60,000 to $100,000 is a typical annual salary for professionals. Of
course most of the men -- they are almost all men -- are motivated by the possibility of a six or seven
figure photo like Britney shaving her head or Kate Middleton sunbathing topless. 

The profession has not gotten more professional. The same Times piece relates how L.A. paparazzi go
by strange names “like the Fingerbreaker and Cheesecake.” Sienna Miller’s experience shows that the
rhetoric of respecting celebrities is mostly fiction, and many paparazzi misogynistically refer to the
practice of celebrities facilitating photos by the sexually suggestive phrase “giving it up.” 

These freelancers work, however, in an environment dominated by a few paparazzi agencies that hire
small armies of “shooters” or “paps.” The largest is X17, which according to Samuels in The Atlantic,
pays around 70 shooters $800 to $3,000 a week and an occasional bonus. The shooters will never
have a museum exhibition; most are low-income, often immigrants, who shoot with cheap cameras.

Today we’re seeing the beginning of a third stage in the paparazzi business, in which hired
photographers are less necessary as smartphone cameras turn everyone, even the stars, into
paparazzi. Many agencies now have online submission forms that allow anyone who bumps into
someone famous and takes a picture to get paid for it. Especially for online content, many
entertainment publications simply grab pictures taken of celebrities from social media, including
pictures that famous people themselves post on Instagram. This is likely done illegally -- whoever
posts a photo on Instagram or Facebook retains the copyright -- yet “stories” about Kim Kardashian’s
latest activities pull from her Instagram, and mainstream press has taken from social media when an
unknown individual is suddenly part of a major story.

A couple choice lawsuits could slam the breaks on this and cede the paparazzi business back to
“professionals,” and devoted paparazzi will still get most of the big scores. But devoted fans can play
the stalking game very well. In 2013, the New York Times profiled Stalker Sarah, a teenager who has
taken pictures with over 6,000 celebrities. Sarah politely asks to take a picture with singers and
actors, and she refuses to sell her photos despite often finding celebrities in compromising situations.
Other fans doing the same may not be as loyal, and free or cheap photos taken by fans will be
increasingly alluring to papers. As The Economist reports, the way that scandalous pictures can
rocket around the Internet means that publications no longer find even exclusive photos nearly as
valuable. One paparazzo informed the venerable paper, “The Internet has ruined it for everybody.”

Paparazzi photography presently constitutes the largest genre of visual celebrity news on the internet along with red
carpet photography. With the emergence of digital media, this genre has moved towards the centre of mainstream
news and entertainment culture, and the content has undergone a significant transformation. Trademark paparazzi
photographs used to be depictions of celebrities deviating from prevailing norms of proper conduct by exhibiting
bodily excess and/or transgressing social or moral codes. By contrast, a content analysis conducted for this article
shows that snapshots of famous people engaged in insignificant everyday activities hold by far the largest share of
today’s insatiable digital, globalized and commercialized market for news pictures of celebrities off-duty. Re-
examining the well-known theorization of the tension between the ordinary and extraordinary in celebrity culture
studies, this article thus investigates the following research question: How is the ordinary represented in paparazzi
photographs as a genre of visual celebrity news in the current, digital media landscape?

Starting from the content analysis of paparazzi photographs on entertainment news sites, we have demonstrated that
what we usually think of as paparazzi photography – images showing celebrities trying to hide from or else aggressively
reject indiscreet photographers, or alternatively disclosing juicy, even scandalous details from their private lives – hardly
corresponds with the genre today. Even if the scandalous paparazzi photographs might draw more attention, as was the
case with the release of the images of Kate Middleton sunbathing, the majority of contemporary paparazzi photographs
depict famous people as ordinary human beings: looking unremarkable, doing everyday things

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring99/johnson/page1.htm

http://priceonomics.com/the-paparrazi-business/