Pondering: Sellebrity

 

Watched  a really thought provoking documentary this afternoon, SELLEBRITY, directed and produced by Kevin Mazur  and available  on Amazon Prime.
Mazur takes a hard look at our need to peer intrusively into our celebrities' lives and persuaded the likes of Jennifer Aniston...

Kid Rock...

and Sarah Jessica Parker...

to open up about one of the downsides of being famous in an age where not only do we have an insatiable, voyeuristic appetite to know all about our stars, but everyone in the world has a camera via their cell phone and can instantly "upload" it to the rest of the world!
I actually experienced this phenomena a few years ago, when at the Telluride Film Festival I saw this...

Yes that is George Clooney, I think, though I never really got a good look at him for the quantity of non-photographers (pros are not "invited" to Telluride), but it actually was a pack of older women who should have known better.
I had been attending the TFF for three years and only James Franco ever came close to the mobs that followed Clooney around.

and there were no craved older women following him, if I remember correctly!

 

One of the most disheartening things mentioned on SELLEBRITY was the invasion of privacy celebrity's families have to endure, especially the children, footage of kids pleading with the paparazzi to stop taking pictures.

 

Of course there is "nothing new under the sun" and RIVIERA COCKTAIL: EDWARD QUINN

 proves it, another documentary available on Amazon's Prime right now. Edward Quinn spent much of the 50s  photographing and invading stars private lives on the Cote d' Azur.

He started about the same time as Audrey Hepburn...

and Sophia Loren...

who humored him with more poses in her hotel room, after he hid in the bathroom while she dismissed the other photographers.
In RIVIERA COCKTAIL, he witnesses the change from the time the stars welcomed the photographers to being more guarded and there being more completion for the money shot.

And money is still being made from Quinn's wonderful black and whites, which can be viewed at http://www.edwardquinn.com/ which includes not only celebrities but the likes of Pablo Picasso and
gypsies and cars of that era.

I know the invasion of privacy the World Wide Web has created has just started to be pondered, but looking into another's private life has always been around, even before the invention of the "point and shoot camera"...

The great impressionistic artist, Edgar Degas declaring he wanted to depict his female bathers as if he was peeking through a door's "keyhole". Sorry folks, voyeurism as always been and will always will be a part of the human nature.