The gloves are off as publicists to stars and top paparazzi cross swords in public glare

Are star photographers biting the hand that feeds them? Showbiz’s frenemies slug it out in a bid to draw boundaries and gain respect in a dog-eats-dog entertainment world

In February this year, Alia Bhatt slammed photographers who had from a structure opposite her apartment taken photographs of her inside, scrolling through her phone and spending private time with family. The A-lister took to Instagram to call out the “invasion of privacy” and tagged the Mumbai police. “Are you kidding me? I was at my house, having a perfectly normal afternoon, sitting in my living room when I felt something watching over me. I looked up and saw two men on the terrace of the neighbouring building with a camera right at me. In what world is this okay and is this allowed? This is a gross invasion of someone’s privacy. There’s a line that you must not cross, and it is safe to say that all lines were crossed today (sic),” the 30-year-old said in the post. 

Soon, several other celebrities shared similar experiences. The situation alluded to the cant-live-with-or-without-you equation that cinema stars share with photographers. While the big names may not like to admit the publicity that paparazzi or photographers’ social media accounts generate for them, for the smaller faces, being clicked could prove make or break. It is a symbiotic relationship. Without the stars, the photographers would not only be jobless, they’d be robbed of the following they enjoy and the reactions that pictures of the famous garner for them. And in this mix is the star’s publicist or manager, often the key to a celebrity presence tip off. 

Celebrities and the paparazzi share a love-hate relationship. Ranveer Singh seen shielding Deepika Padukone from the hustle of eager photographers outside Anil Kapoor’s home in a picture from 2018

If you thought that the surprised expression that heroine sported when she walked out of a Bandra cafe right into an assembly of photographers, was spontaneous, you’ve been living under a rock. It’s often the manager’s job to alert the paparazzi about the star’s whereabouts, whether it’s a Saturday afternoon blow dry at the salon, a dinner with friends in the neigbourhood or a flight to the next shoot. It changes the headline of the “spotted” 

picture to “arranged-to-be-spotted”, but that’s hardly of concern to the fans and public, as long as they get to see their favourite star in ‘candid’ mode. 
Mumbai’s top freelance celebrity photographers have a following that rivals the actors’. Viral Bhayani leads with 7.5 million followers; Manav Manglani has 2.8 million, and Yogen Shah has two million. It has made them powerful enough to decide who will be in conversation today, circulation tomorrow. And it’s a power that the stars and their agents have played a critical role in handing to them.   

Singh shares a light moment with photographers at an awards ceremony in 2018. Pics/Getty Images

Three days ago, leading film publicist Alpa Turakhia who is co-founder of Communique PR, shared a screenshot on her Insta account of a conversation between a well-known pap and her colleague. The pap wrote, “Even prostitutes want a post for airport spotting. So all these celeb managers are pimps indirectly.” 

Fed up, she says, of enduring this behaviour, Turakhia called him out. When this writer, in a moment of solidarity for women professionals, reposted, we received a flurry of messages from celebrity publicists and artiste managers, each with their own version of what they called a pap horror story. 

Once, after Parineeti Chopra was captured asking the paps to not click her pictures, she got viciously trolled

One of them, on condition of anonymity, told mid-day, “Once he [pap] put up a picture of Dharmendra and Waheeda Rahman on his page; it was not a tasteful picture. We requested him to take it down. He ranted, threatened, vomited venomous words. Most of them [paparazzi] are arrogant and have no understanding of how disgraceful their tone can be.”

Another female publicist, who runs a boutique agency, told us, “They give us maa-behen gaalis; blackmail is common. We have sometimes had to keep proof of text message exchanges so that when our clients [stars] ask us why we aren’t dealing with certain senior paps, we can show them why. In our firm, if an artiste wants a post put up by a pap who has behaved badly with us in the past, we ask the agency to reach out to the photographer directly.”

Taapsee Pannu papped during a salon visit in Juhu. She is one of the few stars to have taken a stand against paps, with whom she got into an altercation, while promoting her film Dobaara

Turakhia didn’t name the photographer, but she may have been referring to Bhayani, who identifies himself as a digital creator. The independent photographer who has gone from working solo to hiring a team of 12, reached out to mid-day after our post, saying he is often misunderstood. He admitted to being under overwhelming pressure. “I start my work day at 7 am. It’s non-stop until 1 am. I have a team, yes, but the work becomes too much. I take 200 to 300 calls a day. I admit that I might have spoken rudely or misbehaved with some; I think I should now hire a manager to streamline the communication,” he said. Bhayani, like most other top paps, gets paid for each post. If he won’t deliver, the publicists and stars are sure to come after him. “Say, I schedule a photographer for celebrity spotting at the airport at 8 am. The publicist to a star will call me at 7.50 am, saying s/he is exiting in 10 minutes. I call my guy, he may not answer. He calls me back after 15 minutes. By then, I have had an argument with the publicist. When the pressure mounts and tempers flare, we become negative and end up saying what we shouldn’t. I am fighting for respect, too. No matter how far I go in life, I will always be seen as the man who chases celebrities. I have once had a call from an actor, threatening, ‘Photo nahin dalega tu? Chal, utha leta hoon tujhe’. I am frequently at the police station handling defamation threats. Having said this, I do want to work on my misbehaviour. I have no vices, no hobbies. I work. I don’t want to hurt with my words,” he says philosophically, mirroring his mood from an Instagram story that quotes Buddha: Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

Bhatt is not the only one to have taken a stand. Taapsee Pannu’s altercation with the paps during the promotions of her film Dobaara is now infamous. When Pannu didn’t like the way they spoke to her, she had a heated exchange. mid-day reached out to Pannu this time to understand where her relationship with the paps stands. “Honestly, at that point, it was a reflex action. At times, I have felt that they have crossed the line. They have shouted at me. We are extra-courteous to them because we acknowledge that they spend their days filming us and building us up. That said, sometimes when our personal space is violated, it elicits a reaction. I can’t generalise because like every industry, there are good ones too. Someone sitting at a desk across the country doesn’t realise that paps don’t capture the moments when they misbehave because the camera is on us, not on them.  The videos of us reacting are used as clickbait later, because negativity sells on social media. After the Dobaara incident, I thought a lot about this—is this a healthy part of my profession? Of course not. I am okay if I don’t get clicked often. People notice me because of my work, not how often they see me in fancy clothes. I don’t want to fear what the paps might do if I don’t go out of my way to entertain them. The power we gave them is biting us back. We have overindulged. The boundaries must be drawn. I am happy to meet them at work and entertain them, but not at the cost of my respect.”

Most paps, who hang outside cafés in Bandra, are hired stringers, who are paid a pittance. They are usually fans themselves and just want to be close to their favourite star

Parag Desai, CEO of Universal Communications, a leading entertainment PR firm that represents Ajay Devgan and Amitabh Bachchan, explains how the paparazzi in India became all important. “Social media platforms have become an easy access point for fans to get their news and content on-the-go. Many freelance photographers caught on to this trend and began offering the audience insights into the daily routine of their favourite 

stars. Their pages soon gained popularity, and the public began interacting with their content. We have come to a point where a top pap’s social media is the essential medium for us to reach audiences directly. For young actors, this is crucial to gain recognition, reach a wider audience, and maintain regular visibility. We work on mutual trust and respect. We can’t do without the other. But, dignity and decorum has  space,” he says.

Veteran photographer Mukesh Parpiani says celebrity photography was not staged back in the day. Photographers relied on  exclusive tip-offs to trace the presence of stars. When he was photo editor at mid-day, he calls bagging this midnight picture of Amitabh Bacchan walking to Siddhivinayak mandir in 2007. File photo/mid-day

Fan clubs in the city and those who run them understand the angst of agents. They say, they too have been at the receiving end of arrogance. Sumit Kumar, who runs a popular Sidharth Malhotra fan club with 110k followers on Instagram, spoke of paps expecting revenue sharing. “Fan clubs share content taken from the paparazzi, and credit it to them. What is on social media is out there for everyone to pick up. I was threatened by a pap to not pick up his content. He said I had to become a ‘50 per cent partner’, if I wanted to use his content. He wanted a stake in my revenues and followers. I had to delete his posts from my page and stopped using his content.”

Independent photographers charge for every post they put up. Some of them enjoy a remuneration in the range of three to five lakh. An industry insider says, “The top paps charge in the range of Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per post. If they are given a non-industry person to post about, they hike their fee by another R10,000. For instance, a businessman who wants to be featured will end up paying more than a celebrity.”

Taapsee Pannu

Not everyone, though, is making a killing. A senior photographer with a leading newspaper offers an insight into the freelance photographers’ game. “Most paps make twice the salary of someone like me, a full-timer with a publication, in just a day. Despite this income flow, they choose to hire stringers for as little as Rs 10,000 a month. They don’t ask for hikes, holidays, benefits, food. Most paps you now see hanging outside say, a Bandra cafe waiting for a celebrity, are fans themselves , who want to be close to their stars. They are handed a camera by a top pap and do a bit of his work for him. There is a well-known stringer called Sneh Zala. He was a huge Deepika Padukone fan and would track her every move. He was soon hired by a senior pap. That’s how fans who hang around with their camera phones become ‘content creators’. So many paps have a previous life as delivery boys or drivers. They are not trained or professional. You’ll see them 
crack cheap comments or catcall the actors.” 

He speaks of success having brought along hubris. “Some of them have made fake press cards,” he says. “It gives them access to places where they ordinarily couldn’t go,” he says. But he adds that it’s a juggernaut with multiple players, and all have contributed to this mess: production houses, publicists, and even the stars. “There are stars who have multiple paps on their retainer payroll. You won’t find them posting a bad picture of these actors. Every snap and video that goes up has their approval. So, the world is seeing exactly what they want to show—how relatable, s/he is when s/he eats pani puri on the road just like an average Joe.” 

Alpa Turakhia, Parag Desai and Varun Gupta

When celebrities are involved in major celebrations, like a marriage, iftar party or a house get together, leading paps are paid anywhere between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 30 lakh to cover it. Interestingly, not much of this reaches the foot soldiers, who are often jabra fans, too star-struck to ask for more or better. “They are also unaware of the problem they are becoming.”

Discussing what an important cog in the wheel the paparazzi have become in India, Varun Gupta of Max Marketing, tells mid-day, “Before pap culture, only keen fans would know about a certain star’s arrival in say, Delhi to promote a film. Now, everybody knows. If Kartik [Aaryan] and Kiara [Advani] are at a launch in Jaipur, we can reach out to the entire country simultaneously through paps. They are instrumental in allowing us to reach the right target group across the country. Paps started spotting where celebrities frequented— gyms, salons, cafes, etc. It was organic and gradually, the masses followed. Now, of course, authenticity is out of the window. Anyone can pay and earn a post. They have the power to make a nobody a sensation. Take Uorfi Javed,” he says of the television actor with an outrageous fashion sense. “We all know her, but we have no idea what she does. Ranveer Singh mentions her on Koffee with Karan!” 

Sumit Kumar, Viral Bhayani and Marcellus Baptista

Gupta cites a marketing campaign they did for Oscar-winning film, RRR. They called it RRR march. “We were in different cities on the same day and did interviews against the most famous landmark of the said city... Varanasi Ghat, Howrah Bridge, Statue of Unity. We took four posts a day with the pap pages in a bid to showcase that we were everywhere promoting the film. RRR was a pan-India movie and we had to reflect this in the campaign. It is a marketer’s job to use the paps right. What you put out there and how you use them is in your control.”

Shrenik Gandhi, social media strategist and founder of White Rivers Media explains that enigma is no longer in fashion.  The stars want to be accessible, and relatable. Aura doesn’t sell. 

It wasn’t like this 20 years ago, says veteran photographer and curator, Piramal Gallery, NCPA, Mukesh Parpiani. He remembers a time when they landed a photograph through what they heard and dug out. “When I was photo editor at mid-day, senior photographer  Pradeep Dhivar got a tip off about Amitabh Bachchan walking to Siddhivinayak mandir at night. It wasn’t routine for stars to do this back then. We got the shot in 2007 in the wee hours of the morning. When we learnt that Mandira Bedi would run on the beach early morning, we clicked her exclusively. Even when we did a shoot in conjunction with someone famous, it was more about executing an editorial call, it wasn’t staging a picture. I remember that when Rakhi Sawant was becoming famous, we realised that a middle-class girl was making it big. We shot her on a local from Andheri to Vile Parle. It was part of telling her story.” 

Marcellus Baptista, who has been covering Mumbai’s party circuit for decades, recalls a time when celebrity invites were sent in hard copy. “There was no PR agency to speak of,” says Baptista who started his career with Free Press Bulletin in 1981. “It was friendly. I once went to an art event and met Amitabh there. I didn’t even know he was going to come. It was wonderful. Perhaps publicists should stop encouraging the paparazzi. They are creating a vicious cycle.”

With inputs from Aastha Atray Banan

Rs 10k-Rs 15k
Amount top paps are paid for every celeb picture they post on their social media

Rs 10,000
What top paps pay untrained stringer photographers monthly

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