Scum of the earth?

Scum of the earth?

As so many people keep saying, times have changed. When I was a lad, Victor Blackman wrote a column in Amateur Photographer every week, and I suppose Cameravaria, as it was called, was part of the inspiration for my blog. Each week, a few short pieces about his life as a photographer for the Daily Express – or about his life as a keen amateur photographer.

Vic was a nice bloke, I think – cheerful, open, and entirely the sort of person you’d enjoy a pint or a coffee with. Sometimes his work involved pictures of disasters, at other times he photographed pretty girls. He used the Philippe Halsmann trick of asking models to jump, though tending towards star jumps and pretty girls. I’m not sure if he ever shot Salvador Dali or John Gielgud.



His usual enthusiasm was – shall we say – tempered when he wrote about the paparazzi. In the Sixties, even the red-top British press treated their subjects with a bit of courtesy, and sneaked images of a topless actress or Royal on the beach at a private resort were not published. I am pretty sure that Vic described the paps with my title today, and maybe, specifically, Raymond Bellasario.

How times have changed. There’s a carefully unjudgmental article in this week’s AP about the paps. Peter Dench found that most practitioners of this particular black art don’t want to talk to the press or be quoted. That’s never a good sign: unless national security is involved, and not often then. What has changed?

I realised, eventually. Although newspapers used to have gossip columns, we didn’t have a national obsession with them. Now magazines like Heat are devoted to pictorial gossip. Dench writes that public interest and privacy clash here: I feel it’s important to distinguish between legitimate public interest (say, that a politician has had an affair and has lied to Parliament, suggesting that he may be untrustworthy in other, more important ways) and things that members of the public may be interested in, but which don’t matter.



Gossips build themselves up by making others look bad, and often claim to speak for society in general. They disclose the faults and failings of others (real or imaginary), and relish embarrassing or shameful information about others. “A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man [or woman] who talks too much” (Proverbs 20:19). Do we really want to encourage this? These things matter, but usually only to the individuals and their friends and families.

Gossip is usually harmful, often corrosive. And the paps have helped create the new ‘celebrities’ who are famous for being famous, not for anything they have done or achieved. Worse still, between them, the paps and celebs have whipped up a confection of sweet and sour ideas and pictures, have colluded in screening real news about things that matter, and added to the general level of mistrust and paranoia in society. Maybe everyone should have their 15 minutes of fame – but I’ll pass on mine if I don’t have anything to say that may be of interest…