Having commented in this space a year ago about the media feeding frenzy over the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., I thought I’d come at that question from a different angle. This rumination is prompted by the imminent third anniversary of the death in Paris of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed on August 3, 1997, along with the recent report that Jean-Paul “James” Andanson, the “legendary” paparazzo suspected of accountability in that event, died recently under mysterious circumstances. Apparently, he burned to death in his car on May 6, 2000, near Larzac, in central France. Suicide, though initially suspected, was subsequently rejected as a motive.
According to the Associated Press, Andanson “was in Sardinia, days before the Aug. 31, 1997 deaths of Diana and Dodi, stalking them during their vacation. . . . The photographer was not among the paparazzi found at the scene of the crash and taken into custody.”1 However, a white Fiat Uno with a damaged left-rear fender — owned by Andanson, but repainted and sold shortly after the tragic accident that took the lives of Diana, al-Fayed, and their driver — may have been the vehicle that collided in that Parisian tunnel with the car in which the Princess of Wales and her companions were riding.
The social consequence of the international outpouring of grief over her demise cannot yet be measured. But the death of Diana as the culmination of that high-speed car crash has so far had one potentially beneficial consequence: it has foregrounded, brought to international attention, and sparked serious and widespread public debate over the question of the right to privacy in relation to the behavior of photographers in public places.
This long-overdue consideration began immediately upon the disclosure that the Mercedes in which the late princess was traveling with al-Fayed had been chased from the restaurant in the Ritz hotel by a wolfpack of ten freelance photographers in cars and on motorcycles, and that the high speed at which the vehicle was traveling when it entered the fatal tunnel — 90 mph, some three times over the city speed limit — was unquestionably an effort to elude this pursuit. Outrage grew rapidly upon the disclosure that French police had arrested the seven wilding paparazzi — six French, one Macedonian — whom they found parked and ghoulishly photographing at the scene, and ultimately included the other three in their formal investigation.
The police concern in this matter involved two issues: whether the vehicular behavior of the photographers and their drivers (speeding around and cutting in front of the car, shooting their strobes off in the driver’s face, forinstance) contributed in direct causal fashion to the tragedy, and whether they violated French law by proceeding immediately to photograph the destroyed car and the four dead, dying and injured people trapped within it, rather than calling for help and trying to aid the victims. (Police arriving at the scene found the photographers busily at work with cameras and strobes; according to picture editors in the U.K. and the U.S., images of the crash were being offered for publication, at prices ranging from $325,000 to $1 million, within hours of the calamity.)
Ultimately, on September 3, 1999, French judge Hervé Stephan closed the two-year inquiry into the car crash, finding insufficient evidence to justify the bringing of manslaughter charges against the nine photographers and one press motorcyclist implicated in the accident. This was not exactly an exoneration, or an approval of their actions, but merely an acknowledgment that, technically, they hadn’t broken the law. From Judge Stephan’s decision: “The critical view which could be brought on the manner in which the various people under examination have, during the course of the night in question, exerted their professional activity can only be recorded within the circumstances of the moral appreciation or the code of ethics which govern the profession of journalist or photo-journalist.” (To read the full decision, go to About.com.) The role of Andanson in all this remains unclear, and the possibility of foul play in his death augurs an inevitable spiral into the hall of mirrors of conspiracy theory.
Inclined myself to neither gossip nor celebrity-tracking, I have no particular investment in the Diana story, nor did I feel any special sense of loss or grief over her death. But the needless and pointless ending of a promising young life saddened me, and to the extent that issues of photographic practice — in this case, image-making, picture-editing, photo publishing and photo consumption — are implicated in this situation, the event surely falls within my purview as a regular commentator on issues of photography and culture.
First, let me point out that the behavior of these particular paparazzi and the rest of their ilk — and, indeed, the behavior of photographers who work in the public sphere generally — is largely unregulated by legislation in most countries. This holds true whether the subjects are celebrities like Diana, politicians and holders of public office, people unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight (a white-collar criminal, a rape victim), or simply average citizens going about their daily business in no newsworthy way. What governs the conduct of such photographers instead is a loose mix of public tolerance, accepted professional practice, marketplace demands, established precedent, and a sizeable but incoherent body of case law addressing individual instances and complaints.
Which is to say that the photographers to whom we become potential lens bait once we step out of our front doors — indeed, as soon as we stand visible to them within the windows of our own homes — are not exercising specific legal rights granted to them by the polity and the legal system after extended public consideration of the pros and cons involved. They are acting instead on the basis of powers they’ve arrogated to themselves gradually, without the active consent of the polity and the legislature, and certainly without the agreement and cooperation of the majority of their subjects.
Nor are they guided by anything resembling a professional code of ethics. To the best of my knowledge, there is today no such formal code subscribed to by any group of photographers anywhere in the world. Certainly there’s none here in the U.S. Notably, the last time it promulgated such a protocol — back in the 1970s, as I recall — the American Society of Media Photographers’ “Code of Ethics” concerned itself exclusively with what one could charge for various services: ethics as fee schedule.
Second, there was no widespread social consensus expressly favoring free rein for photographers working in public upon the medium’s introduction in 1839, or anytime thereafter. To the contrary, the voracity, rudeness, amorality and recklessness of a certain breed of photographers was noted early on and — in the U.K., primarily — debated hotly, with efforts at legislative protection of the public made sporadically, as historian Bill Jay has noted. This form of photography continued thenceforth under public sufferance, but hardly with public approval. It remains unclear to me whether the public in any country realizes one simple fact: photographers’ intrusion into private life conducted in public places does not enjoy legislative sanction or protection, but is fundamentally a privilege, possibly rescindable.
That idea should function as the starting point for all debate on this issue. Given the absence of anything on record save a haphazard and often contradictory tangle of case law, nothing prevents the proposal and enactment of new legislation covering rights of privacy in public places. Nothing prohibits the creation of laws protecting the populace from the incursions of photographers specifically and the media in general into anything save distinctly public occasions — political rallies, public demonstrations, street performances and such.
(To be continued.)
1 Nicolas Marmie, “Mystery Fiat May Be Photographer’s,” Associated Press release, Friday, Feb. 13, 1998.
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