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Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ron Galella
Photo: imago stock&people
He followed the stars, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Elvis and Marlon Brando - until the latter broke his jaw: Now the American photographer Ron Galella, a pioneer among the paparazzi, has died.
He was 91 years old.
This was reported by the New York Times, citing a spokesman for the Galellas family.
Ronald Edward Galella grew up in the Bronx, New York.
During the Korean War he served as a photographer in the Air Force and then studied photography in Pasadena, California, as well as acting and directing.
In 1979 he married Betty Lou Burke, who became his business partner and died in 2017.
According to The New York Times, Galella helped define today's celebrity culture "for better or for worse."
Because he photographed stars without their permission in the late 1960s, he was called a crook and even spat on.
His mostly black-and-white pictures, which were printed in magazines such as »Time« or »Life« and which he published in several books, have also been exhibited, compared with works by Henri Cartier-Bresson and by museums such as the New York Museum of Modern Art Bought.
His style was "intimate and aggressive at the same time," according to an article in the style magazine "T" of the New York Times.
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According to the New York Times, he bribed doormen, chauffeurs and maids to position himself in places where nobody expected him - and from where he could photograph stars like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Onassis didn't like that, she sued Galella.
In 1972, a court ordered Galella to keep her distance from Onassis and her children.
After violating this several times and facing jail time, Galella agreed never to take another picture of Onassis.
He stuck to that.
In 1973, after Galella had been stalking the actor all day, Marlon Brando waved at him and asked what else he wanted.
"I'd like a photo without sunglasses," Galella replied, according to the New York Times.
Brando refused, Galella persisted, after which the actor, according to the photographer, knocked out five teeth with his fist: jaw broken.
The famous US film critic Roger Ebert is said to have summarized the ambivalence with which many viewed Galella and his photos as follows: He disapproved of him – and liked his work.
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