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Their attention mattered no less once she had made it. The lenses were her road companions while she was playing the malls of America. "You might as well have thrown red meat to a shark," Harrison said.īritney Spears signing autographs in 2013.Īs her career exploded, Spears had a lot of competition for media attention, a wave she had learned to ride back when few believed in her. And some of us were not good people," Harrison said.

"Some photographers are good and some are bad.

The-opportunist-to- Weegee ratio grew lopsided as point-and-click and email washed away the holdout craftspersons and waved in the grifters. Just as significantly, fees for utilizing informer-style tip lines - the basis of "we caught so-and-so" stories - were going, up up, up. This drop in the barrier to entry coincided with an explosion of outlets for celebrity photography content, such as OK! And Hello! And US had just gone weekly. "You'd find someone who was parking cars last week at Spago restaurant." "Photo agency owners would go around to hot spots, mainly places where they got their information," paparazzo Giles Harrison said. Paparazzi work was now open to any hustler with an index finger and a dream. One shot of Jessica Simpson could pay for the investment 10 times over. While Mendoza was away the price of a professional-level digital camera had fallen to under $3000, down from around $20,000 when he was starting out. When he returned, to focused on "all these little girls out here that were playing the game." Paris Hilton, whom he knew, for starters. He moved on to shooting baseball players in Japan by 2000. Mendoza began his career photographing, printing, and mailing pictures of '80s metal bands on the Sunset Strip. Not much more than a year prior, the game was smaller. "That to me was a huge inflection point." "That's when it stopped being contained," said Julie Farman, an Epic publicist who handled Michael Jackson. The 2003 VMAs are, however, best known for Britney, Christina Aguilera, and Madonna performing "Like a Virgin." You need not have had cable to remember the pictures from when those three kissed. Snoop Dogg was photographed leading two women on leashes into Radio City it was not a photo op Harry Brand would have seen coming. They lined every exit as the shooters sought to capitalize on this content motherlode. Paparazzi crawled to fill every available space. "Celebutants" such as Hilary Duff were getting record deals - their media queries outpacing those for actual artists - and Paris Hilton's first album had debuted days earlier. It's arguable that Opening Day of Peak Paparazzi was Aug. And how were photographers to know the difference. In the Hollywood paparazzo's perspective, he and Spears - and Christina Aguilera and Paris Hilton - were scrimmaging in a fluid, ongoing public relations tournament that fields publicists, magazine editors, and entertainment show producers, too.Īccording to this narrative, the Princess of Pop wanted cameras trained on her, until she didn't. The case was settled two years later, People reported.) Mendoza sued Spears for a 2007 incident where he alleged the pop star had intentionally driven over his foot as she was leaving a parking garage after a judge suspended her rights to see her two young sons. "If someone's entertained, then the system is working," said Mendoza. Do people want to see that? Obviously yes. I'll show you when they're picking their nose. I'll show you when they're taking out their garbage. The paparazzi took that away," Mendoza insisted.