Reviewing “Smash His Camera,” a 2010 documentary about Mr. Galella, the critic Roger Ebert articulated the ambivalence many felt toward him, whether or not they knew the name of the photographer behind the memorable pictures he took. “I disapproved of him,” Mr. Ebert said, “and enjoyed his work.”
Ronald Edward Galella was born on Jan. 10, 1931, one of five children of Vincenzo and Michelina (Marinaccio) Galella, and grew up in the Bronx. His father made pianos and coffins; his mother was a crochet beader.
After serving as a photographer in the Air Force during the Korean War, Mr. Galella studied photography at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and acting and stage direction at the Pasadena Playhouse — lessons he later credited with giving the best of his photographs their dramatic effect.
He married Betty Lou Burke in 1979, and she became his business partner. For many years they made their headquarters in a cramped house in Yonkers, N.Y., built by one of Mr. Galella’s brothers. Ms. Galella died in 2017.
Mr. Galella is survived by his brother Vincent and many nieces and nephews as well as great-nieces and -nephews.
His relentless pursuit of celebrities made him something of one himself. Mr. Galella put out 22 books in all, some devoted entirely to a single subject, like Donald J. Trump, Michael Jackson and, of course, Mrs. Onassis, and the gallery exhibitions that often accompanied them — each a publicity-generating photographic cavalcade of the famous — would put him at center stage.
He acknowledged that his prime motivation as a photographer was mercenary, with artistic and neurotic reasons thrown in for good measure. He stalked Mrs. Onassis because there was a lucrative market for pictures of her that no other photographer was tapping, he said in a 1983 interview. And because he was obsessed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
