Everyone is familiar with the term 'paparazzi' from glossy magazines – snapshots of fast boats, dark sunglasses and secret dalliances. Anyone who dares to show themselves on the beaches of Sardinia will acknowledge that these others are there too, lurking behind their cameras. Celebrities and paparazzi are, however, symbiotically intertwined – they produce 'secret images' in collaboration. In this book, photographer and filmmaker Armin Linke links up with renowned Italian paparazzi Corrado Calvo to publish a selection of sequences from a conglomeration of 80,000 images from the early noughties.
Within the image series shown in the publication, a different kind of logic becomes apparent that stands in contrast to the published image from mass media: Their staged character becomes obvious. Whatever is cut out of the situations shown in the magazine images only becomes evident in the sequential nature of the pictures. The photos thus unexpectedly become social documents.
Spector Books, 304pp, 23cm x 30cm, illustrated paperback with supplement, 2026
