We have long lived in the age of paparazzi, yet the public in general is ignorant about the reality of how these images are created. Many people believe that freewheeling photographers happen to stumble across reality TV stars working out in full makeup, or musicians walking very slowly to their cars outside five-star hotels, or soap actors frolicking in the surf in Dubai. What the public does not see: the paparazzi who go on holiday with celebrities; the agents who have paparazzi on speed dial; the paparazzi who give a cut of their income to the people they photograph.
But recent months have seen the paparazzi thrust, blinking and unwilling, into the spotlight. In the recently concluded “Wagatha Christie” libel case, text messages were submitted to the court in which Rebekah Vardy and her former agent Caroline Watt discussed tipping off the photo agency Splash News about the arrest of the footballer Danny Drinkwater, as well as arranging for a paparazzo to photograph – without their consent – a group of footballers’ partners leaving a restaurant during the 2018 World Cup. (Splash News and Backgrid are the leading photo agencies in the industry, responsible for most of the images sold into newspapers and magazines.)
