As regular readers will know, I’m a fan of
street photography, not least of Ron Galella (above), who is obviously a special case, and I suppose really a paparazzo (not that I see an absolute difference). He seems to have been a fairly “square” guy who nevertheless had (and since he’s
still alive and well as far as one can tell - he’s 84 - I hope still has) an intense, instinctive understanding of modernity and the nature of images, news,
celebrity, fame and whatnot .
He was also fortunate in his obsessions. He befriended and then endlessly photographed
Andy Warhol, who if not exactly a kindred soul, was at least a fellow traveler. They shared data. In part they wanted the same thing - to
photograph and be around celebrity, though they wanted this in rather different
ways.
Galella’s other obsession, one that eventually
got him into all kinds of legal trouble was Jackie Onassis. He followed her, photographed her, by some definitions stalked her.
Now, personally I was too young to “get”
Jackie Onassis at the time. To mine
youthful eyes she always looked like a middle aged woman. I can now see that different opinions are
possible.
Still, as a Hollywood walker, I did come
across the above picture taken by Galella showing Jackie walking down the street
with a kind of “Hollywood sign” behind her.
In fact the sign belongs to the Hollywood Twin Cinema in Manhattan, from
which she was emerging, having seen Death
in Venice. It seems the building’s
still there, but apparently no longer a cinema.
There’s also this picture of Jackie being
pursued by Ron, taken by – which seems wonderfully meta. The picture shows Galella following her to take the Hollywood Cinema picture, even
as this photograph itself is evidence of further, supplementary stalking.
And if I was too young to understand the
appeal of Jackie Kennedy, I was DEFINITELY too young to understand the appeal
of Aristotle Onassis. In my innocence
and naivety I didn’t realize that women might be attracted to dodgy,
unattractive old billionaires. A lesson
learned there.
I’m
not sure that Jackie absolutely always walked behind Onassis, but evidently she
sometimes did.
And equally I’m sure she didn’t absolutely always walk
alongside or in front of JFK, but again the photo evidence suggests that she
surprisingly often did.
