Child of the Bronx, son of a man who made pianos and coffins, Ron Galella captures a critical juncture of the star system, from Chaplin to De Niro, Garbo to Brooke Shields.

By shooting from party to street and back, he made the world one long party: Jackie and Onassis at P.J. Clarke’s, Robert Redford on his way home, McCartney and his family in front of a supermarket: “Ron, all you have to do is ask.”

Eminently New-York, his world is elegance and trash: Elizabeth Taylor eating fries, Marlon Brando blackout drunk, paparazzi pictures at MoMa. All dressed, all out: young stars, socialites, billionaires, intellectuals. Highbrow-lowbrow: Richard Avedon gawking at Kate Moss, Vladimir Horowitz at Studio 54. (Galella would describe the club as “one giant TV set”).

“Snapshots rather than portraits”, the pictures show a lucky-dip society. James Baldwin meets Richard Gere; John Lennon, Mick Jagger; and Grace Jones…Ron Galella.

Win a few, lose a few: five teeth to Brando, 10 000$ to Onassis, another tooth to Richard Burton, his car tires to Elvis. His most infamous case was Jackie’s. One of thousands of pictures he took of her was one too many. She yelled “Smash his camera !”, and he was ordered to stay 25 feet away from her at all times – by law. A friend laughs: “He’s the price tag on the first amendment”.

This world never stopped. His dark room was at home, and, on a day of rest, he bumped into Andy Warhol at the Zoo. Warhol accepted, posed, and got a ride back: June 12, 1983. The artist would later declare:  “My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It’s being in the right place at the wrong time. That’s why my favorite photographer is Ron Galella.”

The child of two immigrants, his is a success story of its own: that time is that of his pictures, whether in Time, Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, or Life, all the way to the MoMa, the Tate, or the Pompidou.

Hailed by Glenn O’Brien as a “brilliant realist able to represent the world faithfully”, Galella retired out of fatigue: not the same way of shooting, not the same celebrities. Today, he says, celebrities are too ready and not enough: borrowed suits, out of touch and out of place. Were they to look the part, who would be there to take the picture?