Celebrity Photographer's Archivist Connects With Fans On Reddit Instead Of Freaking Out

from the that's-how-it's-done dept

When a person's whole job revolves around managing and licensing a catalogue of copyrights, it's hardly surprising (if still disappointing) when they freak out about unauthorized sharing. So it's really nice to see someone in that exact position taking the opposite tack, as recently happened when a comparative Then & Now photo of Meryl Streep (which demonstrates that she may be some kind of magical ageless faerie) shot up the Reddit charts (thanks to Andy for sending this in):

The 1979 photo is by famous pioneer-paparazzo Ron Gelella. The archive director for the company that manages his copyrights saw the image and showed up in the Reddit comments... with additional info and a link to related photos. This garnered a very positive reaction from the community:

As you can see, this prompted an AMA, which is interesting in itself, featuring lots of conversation about how the internet has changed the paparazzi business and the differences between modern paparazzi and early ones like Gelella.

I wouldn't be surprised if all this exposure led to some print sales for the company—though what would be really cool is if they started working on some additional interesting offerings. There is apparently a huge amount of interest in Gelella's photography and perhaps even more in his anecdotes, not to mention a lot of people who want to jump into the moral debate surrounding the paparazzi. The archivist is clearly skilled at connecting with fans, and I bet they can come up with some great reasons to buy, too.

Filed Under: archives, connect with fans, licensing, meryl streep, paparazzi, reddit, ron gelella