I am known, so I am

Exit les icônes d’hier ! La célébrité se banalise, devient éphémère. Deux paparazzis,Pascal Rostain etBruno Mouron, et une sociologue,Nathalie Heinich, analysent le phénomène.

Madame Figaro.-Pascal Rostain andBruno Mouron, why did you choose Famous for your book?Pascal Rostain.- Famous sounds like a cry, a slogan, a jingle.The word Famous means "famous", but for us, it is much more than that: an era that stretches between the 1970s and 80s, when "celebrity" was an art of living, an attitude, an elegance.The shots we have selected are the illustration.We see relaxed, uninhibited, natural, often funny and endearing stars.But always "stars" in their way of breathing, walking, standing.Once starified, the icons of those years remained from morning to evening, until their death.They never trivialized.With the fragility, the hubris and the discipline that it required.Madness too.This time is over.Fellini described it in the dolce vita, showing how paparazzi was part of the family of the Famous, lunch, dined, came out in a box, spent a vacation with them.Everything was played in friendship, respect, benevolence and confidence.

Bruno Mouron.- Today, celebrity is making, planning.Reality TV shows exhibit unknowns that become famous and then disappear...With all that that means: trauma, anxiety, depression and even suicide.Nathalie Heinich.- There are still stars: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt to play the game of fame, as in the past in Hollywood.Bruno Mouron.- Yes, they are famous since they are visible.Not a week is going on without you seeing, in magazines, Angelina and Brad with their six children, go from one place to the other from the planet.We even have the impression that they are only doing that: showing off. N’est-ce pas une autre manière de se mettre en scène ?Bruno Mouron.- The stars are taken in pincers between the desire to be stars and at the same time ordinary people.Nathalie Heinich explique très bien dans son livre comment on est passé du statut de star à celui de people.What is the difference?Nathalie Heinich.- The old stars were like the stars: rare, sublimated and inaccessible.Their shine shone long after their appearance.Then, these stars became people, more popular, less brilliant, more ephemeral.This phenomenon is the consequence of the planetary extension of the culture of celebrity, which leads to the rise of visibility as endogenous value and no longer as added value to preexisting quality.Another consequence: the tendency to information less controlled by celebrities and more attack on their privacy.

"Drifts of current starification"

Bruno Mouron.- This phenomenon appeared recently.The stars decided that they wanted to show themselves as us.He or these photos that insist on their daily, family, normal life.Pascal Rostain.- The actors leave a shoot, put their jeans back, take their car, go home, take care of their family and resume work the next day.They behave like everyone else.Formerly, a Liz Taylor showed her diamonds, her household scenes and his films.Today, these same stars show themselves with their children in supermarkets.Is there a chronology of the phenomenon of peopolization?Nathalie Heinich.- it is linked to the development of technology: the more it develops, the more the relationship with celebrities becomes intimate.First there was television, then the cable;Today, there is the Internet and the smartphone.Visibility consumption is increasingly moving towards the sale of information or the exchange of words on the intimacy of those who are no longer stars but stars or people.What is a star compared to a star or a people?Nathalie Heinich.- Some believe that the stars were killed by the new wave, which brought the cinema down in the street.Patrice Leconte has very well described the difference between a star and a star.He says that one day he saw Jean-Paul Belmondo arriving on a set.Everyone was screaming: "Bébel, Bébel!"He was the big brother of French cinema.Then, suddenly, there was a great silence that weighed down the atmosphere.Delon arrived.Everyone was silent, dumbfounded by his appearance.To caricature, we can say that Delon is a star, Belmondo a star, and Loana, of the "loft", a people.

Isn't it a real talent to know how to put her life on stage?Nathalie Heinich.- The staging of privacy is one of the typical forms of the excesses of current starification, which tends to stage the daily life of celebrities.

Why did it become a seller?Nathalie Heinich.- Some people love to admire, but also want to hate or denigrate at the same time.Seeing intimate images is a universally shared feeling, based on curiosity and the need for identification.These people want to be able to say to themselves: in the end, she is like me.Implied: she has gained a little weight, she is wrinkled.Notice the hooks to the interviews of stars in magazines: they always insist on the side "like everyone", natural, sympathetic, affordable of the star interviewed and not on her inaccessible and hieratic side.

"Some stars sell more"

Conversely, some actresses like Catherine Deneuve control their image by rareifying their presence in the press.Everything is a question of dosage.Pascal Rostain.- This is what I say: the right dosage makes the connivance of yesteryear impossible.Take for example this photo that we took from Orson Welles when he came to Paris, in 1982, to preside over the Césars ceremony.It was the myth par excellence.We had a Harley and we followed him in his turn of the great restaurants in Paris, in Bentley.We had slipped our card to a red light.A few days later, his assistant called us to tell us that he will meet us in his room at the Lancaster hotel.He opens the door to his robe in a robe.His belt being too short, he had taken the cord from one of the curtains of his suite to close it.He phoned, smoked a cigar.I started taking pictures.Then he went out, I continued to take pictures in his car.Everything was flowing from the source.

Nathalie Heinich.- This photo is incredible precision.She does not have the grain of a stolen photo and nevertheless looks like a stolen photo.

Bruno Mouron. – C’est une question d’objectif. Nous prenions nos photos à trois mètres de nos sujets sans téléobjectif. Ça change tout. Jean-Luc Delarue et Neil Armstrong, le premier homme qui a marché sur la Lune, sont morts la même semaine. Paris Match a fait sa une avec Delarue...Nathalie Heinich. – Jean-Luc Delarue était un homme de télévision, qui est devenue le support le plus populaire de la célébrité. Delarue était une véritable vedette.Bruno Mouron. – Pourtant Armstrong était connu mondialement, lui. Mais certaines stars font plus vendre. C’est une question de génération.Nathalie Heinich. – Les progrès technologiques donnent la possibilité à chacun de devenir, à un moment donné de sa vie, une personnalité. Ces nouvelles célébrités ne sont pas forcément indexées à un mérite particulier, à un accomplissement personnel, mais elles constituent la nouvelle élite. Le simple fait d’être exposé aux médias vous rend désormais célèbre.

"Being watched can become an addiction"

Tout le monde éprouve-t-il le besoin d’être visible ?Nathalie Heinich.- No.Some writers or great scientists develop a culture of invisibility.They consider that they are great by what they do and not by their image.

Where does this need for visibility come from? Bruno Mouron. – De la nuit des temps, non ? S’il y avait eu Voici à l’époque des gladiateurs, ils en auraient fait la une toutes les semaines !Nathalie Heinich.- Being looked at, the feeling of existing through the simple look of a stranger who knows who you are knowing that you know nothing about him, can become an addiction.Your best memory?Pascal Rostain.- at the G8 in 2004, in the Rockies.I spent two days with Putin, Chirac, Bush, Blair.I made incredible photos, very close to proximity: Bush tending his cup to have coffee, and Putin turning the sugar in his coffee...Andy Warhol said everyone could one day have their quarter -hour celebrity.Do stars not aspire today a quarter of anonymity?Nathalie Heinich.- Many celebrities dream of disguising yourself to go to the incognito cinema.Advertising Georges Cravenne had the metro at Liz Taylor and Grace Kelly take the metro.As if it were the biggest audacity.Pascal Rostain.- They surely dream of anonymity...But no more than fifteen minutes.Nathalie Heinich.- I will take the word from Greta Garto: "I never said I wanted to be alone, I only said that I wanted to be left alone.Which makes a big difference.»»

Famous, deBruno Mouron etPascal Rostain, éd.Robert Laffont.The exhibition of the same name takes place at the Galerie A.(75016 Paris) until October 27 (www.A-Galerie.Fr).Visibility. Excellence et singularité en régime médiatique, deNathalie Heinich, éd.Gallimard.

Organic Express

Nathalie Heinich, sociologist, research director at the CNRS, former pupil of Pierre Bourdieu, specializes in the study of the cultural practices and the identity of the artist in the face of notoriety.Pascal Rostain etBruno Mouron, paparazzis, créateurs de l’agence de photos Sphinx, sont les auteurs de scoops comme la photo de Richard Attias et Cécilia – à l’époque encore Cécilia Sarkozy – dans les rues de New York, en 2005.

Bruno Mouron etPascal Rostain parNathalie Heinich« ils mettent en pratique ce que je théorise.»»

Nathalie Heinich parBruno Mouron etPascal Rostain« elle théorise ce que nous pratiquons.»»