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Paparazzi, 2008-2010




                Paparazzi, this word of Italian origin, names those photographers who capture celebrities, authorities, exposing their lives, displaying their intimacy. The paparazzo, eager to capture an unprecedented scene starring the famous person being photographed, ends up selling it – amid variable speculation – to the press for high prices. Evidently, the price paid for the image for the scene captured is related to the fame of the celebrity, as well as the situation they were in at the time it was photographed, the intimate, private, sometimes compromising or unpleasant moment.

               The term paparazzi was popularized in cinema by the film La dolce vita (1960), by Federico Fellini (1920-1993), set in a Rome that was both sophisticated and decadent and having as its central character the journalist Marcello Rubini, obsessed with scandals and gossip. The journalist was accompanied by photographer Signore Paparazzo, a character inspired by Italian photographer Tazio Secchiaroli (1925-1998). The popularization of the term comes from the photographer played by Walter Santesso. From the film La dolce vita to the death of Princess Diana of Wales (1961-1997), through the legal processes that respond to the invasion of other people's privacy, the paparazzi follow each step of the celebrities, feed and live on it.

              The work Paparazzi work is composed of two circular, rimless mirrors, with magnifying lenses, positioned parallel, with zoom in, zoom out and articulated arms made of golden brass, arranged at the height of the observer's eyes. A central concern in the design and research of materials that constituted this work was the fact that the two circular sheets of mirror did not have any frame, that they almost “dissolved” in space with their sharp limits. It was expected that, given the loss of their contours and this possible “disappearance”, the observer would come across the two mirrors somewhat abruptly and that the articulated arms of the mirrors would suggest pointed movements in the air.  There was also in this work a movement of approximation and repulsion, as in Vis-à-vis, and which, equally, seemed to evoke the optical zoom in and zoom out movements of the paparazzo's camera and a questioning about the respective contemporary domains of “privacy” and “publicity”.