It took only a decade from the time Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita gave the world the term “paparazzo” for Ron Galella, who has died aged 91, to become the best known, and most infamous of paparazzi. Though his trade was photography, he benefited from the growth of television, which brought celebrities into American households daily, and from the precarious balance between celebrities’ need to be seen and their desire for privacy.
He sometimes tried to explain his trade as a kind of friendly symbiosis with his subjects, but Galella’s own fame was built on his contentious relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
