The American photographer Ron Galella, nicknamed “the king of paparazzi”, unparalleled and controversial photojournalist who for over half a century has chased and immortalized actors, directors, singers and politicians, to narrate, strictly in black and white, the world of celebrities, is died Saturday, April 30 at the age of 91 at his home in Montville, New Jersey. The news of his disappearance was published today by the New York Times.
Newsweek defined Galella as «Paparazzo Extraordinaire», while Time e Vanity Fair they gave him the nickname “Godfather of American paparazzi culture”. During his career he has shot more than 3,000,000 portraits of characters from the star system, meticulously kept in his immense villa just over an hour from New York, in a corner of the New Jersey countryside: he has photographed, among many, John Travolta, Sylvester Stallone, Elvis Presley, Louis Amstrong, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Maria Callas, Sophia Loren, Frank Zappa, Richard Burton, Elton John, Yves Saint Lauren, Mick Jagger, Jackie Kennedy, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol , Anna Magnani, John Lennon, Liz Taylor, Robert Redford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cher, Michael Jackson, Robert De Niro, Mick Jagger, Marcello Mastroianni, Roberto Benigni.
It was he himself who remembered two episodes that marked his career: the first time when Marlon Brando, before entering a restaurant in Chinatown in New York, turned towards him and hit him violently with a fist, making five teeth go out and breaking his jaw. After that episode, for which he was also compensated, when Galella crossed Marlon Brando he always wore a football helmet, and when a colleague photographed him following the actor with the helmet on his head and the camera in his hand, that image it was published on a double page by the magazine People and became famous all over the world.
The second time when his obsession with Jackie Kennedy, wife of Aristotle Onassis at the time, ended in 1972 with his arrest for “photographic stalking” and a restraining order issued by the judge that prevented him from approaching from that day forward. to her less than fifteen meters. Ron Galella was not discouraged and decided that, whenever he could meet the Kennedy’s widow, he would take a giant meter with him to check the right distance.
Another target was actor Sean Penn, who annoyed by the photojournalist spat in his face. Galella suffered another assault by Richard Burton’s bodyguards, losing a tooth, and she filed a lawsuit against the actor but it proved unsuccessful. Despite the countless criticisms and denunciations, Andy Warhol said of him: «A good photo must portray a famous person, doing something not famous. His being in the right place at the wrong time. That’s why my favorite photographer is Ron Galella ».
His photographs, with prices ranging from 4,000 to 15,000 dollars, have been purchased by newspapers and magazines such as “Time”, “Harper’s Bazaar”, “Vogue, Vanity”, “Fair”, “People”, “Rolling Stone”, “The New Yorker”, “The New York Times”, “Life” and exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Tate Modern gallery in London, the Helmut Newton Museum in Berlin and the Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen in Amsterdam. His portraits are permanently displayed on the 11 floors of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, a prestigious Los Angeles hotel.
Born in New York on 10 January 1931, the son of an immigrant carpenter from Muro Lucano, in Basilicata, a village of which he was an honorary citizen, Ron Galella began shooting in the army during the Korean War, and then graduated in photojournalism in the 1958 at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.
Since the 1950s there has been no celebrity who has not been paparazzi to the refined brazenness of Ron Galella, able to always be found in the right place at the right time. “Stolen” photographs yes, but appreciated for their immediacy, often taken in bursts without even looking into the lens, which repeatedly caused him numerous problems, but which in the end were published in the main magazines around the world and today are present in the most prestigious museums.
Ron Galella, a unique and unrepeatable character, capable of redefining the relationship between celebrity and photographer, although many actors and artists had willingly resigned themselves to his presence, also because it is fundamental for their own popularity, has found himself several times in the midst of various fights taking blows, shoves, spits and insults from many actors and famous people, often ending up in front of a judge. Yet, Ron Galella’s genius was also that of transforming the most difficult moments with irony and wit into opportunities to continue to be appreciated.