LAST weekend's events in Paris may have created some confusion. The paparazzi who chased Princess Diana's car to its fatal crash work outside the proud profession of photojournalism. Let's get this straight. Stalking people is criminal, whether with a gun, a camera or merely a perverse intent. Stalking celebrities is obsession not journalism. Paparazzi aren’t
photojournalistsConsider Stuart Franklin's 1989 photograph of a single man blocking a column of Chinese army tanks in Beijing. That image defined a moment of human history. So did Joe Rosenthal's picture of U.S. Marines raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima and Robert Jackson's shot of Jack Ruby murdering Lee Harvey Oswald. This is photojournalism.
History books are filled with it: A woman kneels over a student killed at Kent State, the Hindenberg explodes in flames, an officer executes a Vietcong prisoner with a pistol, a naked Vietnamese girl flees a napalm attack, a sailor kisses a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day.
Photographers speak of "making" a picture, not "taking" one. It requires skill, effort and often guts. Unlike writing, photojournalism requires exposure - physical as well as photographic. The good ones follow this advice: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."
Robert Capa (killed in Indochina, 1954), David Seymour (Suez Canal, 1956), Larry Burrows (Laos, 1971) and others paid the ultimate price to create historic images. The paparazzi have as little in common with these distinguished professionals as rats have with thoroughbreds.