86 The Economist May 14th 2022
Obituary Ron Galella
Somephotographersusestudios,andassistantstohelpwith
the lighting. Ron Galella had a method, a method he believed in
so deeply it amounted to a creed: learn to crash events, find out
where the kitchen is (useful for sneaking in), never check your
coat, shoot fast and always hold the camera in front of your chest.
If you hold it up and look through the lens, you don’t see the eyes.
What you need is eye contact. Eyetoeye, person to person, he
liked to say, that’s how you get the real McCoy.
He wasn’t always so confident. He grew up in the North Bronx,
with an accent as thick as provolone. From his father, an immi
grant from Italy who made coffins and piano cases and never real
ly learned to speak English, he learned to be tight with money. His
Americanborn mother longed for the glamour she saw in the
movies, and named her son after a film star. Both chippy in their
own way, his parents fought all the time. His main comfort was a
pet rabbit, until his father cooked it in a stew.
It was the air force that give him his first break, during the Ko
rean war, when he signed up for photography lessons while learn
ing about camera repair. Soon he was shooting visiting celebrities
for the base newspaper. After he was discharged in 1955 the giBill
helped him through art school in California. He began photo
graphing actors at premieres and parties in his spare time to make
extra money.
He was lucky with timing. In 1960 Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce
Vita” introduced the world to a photographer named Paparazzo.
The filming of “Cleopatra” in Rome shortly afterwards fuelled de
mand for celebrity snaps as its two stars, Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton, embarked on an adulterous affair that scandal
ised the Vatican and made headlines across the Atlantic. The
young camera repairer, fresh out of the air force, quickly learned
that his parttime gig could become a lifelong career.
He became adept at catching stars with their guard down: GretaGarbo coming out of her apartment, face hidden in a handker
chief; John Lennon and Mick Jagger sharing a smoke; Mick Jagger
again, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen sharing a mic; Gina Lollo
brigida coming profiletoprofile with Michelangelo’s David. He
bribed a watchman to lock him in a ratty Thameside warehouse
one weekend so he could spy on Taylor and Burton squabbling ov
er breakfast aboard their yacht, Kalizma, after they put up gauze
curtains around the deck to ensure their privacy. What made him
famous wasn’t his photographs, but the subjects he photo
graphed. Andy Warhol, who saw him in the same way he saw him
self, as a lonely outsider craving to be let in, called it “being in the
right place at the wrong time”.
Some didn’t mind being caught at the wrong time or having
their privacy invaded. It gave them exposure and meant they were
on the up. But many did. Elaine, a famed New York restaurateur,
tried to hit him with a dustbin lid. Sean Penn spat at him. Marlon
Brando punched him in the jaw, knocking five of his teeth out.
There was no one he pursued like he pursued Jackie Kennedy.
She was mysterious, elusive—and gloriously photogenic. He hid
behind the coatcheck when she went to a restaurant and followed
her to her seat when she was at the theatre, he boasted in “Smash
His Camera”, a documentary. Almost every day he lurked outside
her apartment building at 1040 Fifth Avenue, and once even fol
lowed her to a Greek island where, dressed up as a sailor, he took
pictures of her on holiday. He dated her maid to pump her for in
formation, until she got the sack. Asked about the Jackie fixation,
he said he was unattached at the time and saw her as his golden
girl, his girlfriend (in a way). When he did eventually marry, it was
to a woman whose voice reminded him of Jackie’s.
In all the years he shot Kennedy, he always said his best streak
came in early October 1971. On October 4th he snapped her watch
ing her daughter playing tennis in Central Park. The next day she
went shopping at Bonwit Teller. On October 6th he caught her at
the corner of 85th Street and Fifth Avenue and later at the New
York Public Library. On October 7th he’d just finished some portfo
lio shots for a model when he saw her coming out of the side en
trance of her building. It was late in the afternoon, with a blue sky
and a light breeze. Perfect soft Manhattan light, he called it. As she
turned onto Madison Avenue, he hopped in a cab. At the honk of a
horn she suddenly looked up, and he got what he would always
call his Mona Lisa shot, “Windswept Jackie”, with her hair blowing
across her face and just the beginnings of a smile.
The smiling didn’t last, of course. As soon as she recognised
him, she hid behind her sunglasses. Two months later she sued
him. Lifemagazine ran a cover story with the headline, “Jackie and
the JackieWatcher”. He was ruining her life, she told the court. She
had no peace, no peace of mind, she said. She was always under
surveillance, imprisoned in her own house. The judge agreed, and
ordered that he respect a nogo zone around the former First Lady
and her children. When he broke the embargo repeatedly, the
court threatened him with jail.
His pictures, and the way he got them, spawned an industry
that came to see celebrities as prey to be hounded. His photo
graphs are now in the Museum of Modern Art. “Windswept Jackie”
is his most popular, and most expensive, print. The trial made him
famous—and rich enough to build a mansion in New Jersey with a
photo gallery covering one entire floor, a basement archive for the
3m pictures taken over half a century and a cemetery in the garden
for the pet rabbits he still loved from childhood.
If before the trial he was regarded as a gadfly, afterwards many
saw him as a pest. When it ended he received an anonymous let
ter: “You are a rat...I pray that you get paid back for the misery you
are causing a woman who has gone through hell, a hell caused by
another maniac like you. You are stupid, monstrous and slimy.
You should be deported to an island to rot.” When Kennedy died,
he headed one last time to 1040 Fifth Avenue. He took no pictures
that day; just paid his respects.nStarstruckRon Galella, the original paparazzo, died on April 30th.
He was 91