Ron Galella, the first paparazzi, dies

“The stars call me by my name.

That's an honour."

They also broke his jaw, as Marlon Brando did one day, who, fed up with being persecuted, punched him.

Ron Galella, considered the first paparazzi, has died of heart failure at the age of 91 at his home in Montville, New Jersey.

He had been born 91 years ago in New York.

Galella helped forge the mythology of the stars through his work as a star-chasing photographer.

Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Barbra Streisand, Andy Warhol or Jackie Onassis were

of his fast camera.

One day, Robert Redford said to him, “How can you always get there before me?”

Galella helped shape pop culture with her stolen snapshots.

Denounced twice by Jackie Onassis, beaten up by a group of thugs under the orders of Richard Burton and the subject of the famous wounding punch thrown by Marlon Brando, his photographs, over the years, became part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, and the stars who once disowned him come to his exhibitions.

Ron Galella backstage at a Leif Garrett concert in Houston, Texas, in January 1978. Brad Elterman (BuzzFoto/FilmMagic)