An aggressive new species of photographer is gobbling up territory at press conferences and red carpets, less technically schooled than previous generations, obsessed by the money in “money shot,” likely to be foreign-born and almost always in position to get the shot thanks to a tip -- from a publicist.
Once we cherished a “La Dolce Vita” fantasy of the paparazzo as some comical shutterbug nipping at the stilettos of Anita Ekberg or Sophia Loren. Today he is a surly Brazilian, lugging a Nikon D3 in search of Lindsay Lohan.
This new breed includes not only paparazzi, but also more mainstream celebrity photographers and iPhotographers who materialize with still or video cameras at news events.
In fact, it is the unpaid amateur who may well represent the plague that kills off photojournalists and paps alike.
“The citizen photographers -- the guys with iPhones and consumer-level SLRs -- are the biggest enemies,” says Ted Soqui, a longtime L.A. freelance photographer who’s covered everything from riots to wildfires to fashion runways. “They’ve taken over and they are doing it for free. It’s a revolution.”
Many other veteran photojournalists, who began their apprenticeships working with film and darkroom chemicals, do not discriminate among paps and iPhotographers – to them they are both pains in the ass who block shots, endanger bystanders and drive down fees and artistry.
“We’re not just one-upping each other," Soqui says of today’s frenzied media scrums. "We’re working against
people who are not journalists and don’t know much about the history of photojournalism.”
However, as far as all the newcomers are concerned, the old guys are lazy relics from the age of print who just can’t take a little competition.
“This business is about the survival of the fittest,” says X17’s Brandy Navarre, who believes there is more professional overlap between mainstream and pap photographers than is commonly acknowledged. “I worked for Reuters and when I shot Madeleine Albright I didn’t stand in the back of the crowd. We’re basically one and the same."
Navarre is chief of X17’s online operations. Her company was one of the first and biggest of the groundbreaking pap agencies, and currently competes with Bauer Griffin, WireImage and Splash News. X17 was founded by her husband, Francois, in 1997 and has weathered allegations that its army of freelance photogs are aggressive thugs or former gang members.
“A lot of these guys are really excited to be related to the celebrities they shoot,” Navarre says. “They get calls from celebrities, they become friends. We are genuine fans of the celebrities.”
She denies perennial charges that X17’s photographers deliberately cause accidents to boost a photo’s value, or physically surprise or harass celebrities in order to get unflattering reaction shots.
“That’s a popular misconception,” Navarre says of the latter charge. “It doesn’t benefit us to have pictures of contorted faces and middle fingers that we can’t sell.” She also denies that paps engineer accidents because the potential litigation surrounding such photos makes them unsellable.
