Exhibitions2014Paparazzi - Photographers, stars and artists

As early as the 1910s, magazines set aside column inches for the celebrities of the day, and published photographs of stars caught unwittingly on film. A century after the illustrated press was at its most popular, and in an age when gossip magazines are a thriving industry, the "paparazzi phenomenon" is the subject of an unprecedented exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz.

The figure of the "paparazzi" was invented by Federico Fellini in his 1960 film, La Dolce Vita, the term being a contraction of "pappataci" (mosquitoes) and "ragazzi" (ruffians). Thus the practice of tracking celebrities in the hope of a candid shot has been around for half a century.

By associating the profession's foremost representatives with artists whose work questions this modern myth, Paparazzi! sets out to define a paparazzi aesthetic.

Through some 700 works and documents, the exhibition examines the complex relationship between the "image hunter" and the star – who can be an innocent victim as much as an accomplice, even dictating the conditions for their own media fame – and reveals how today's fashion shoots bear the hallmarks of paparazzi style.

Visitors will come eye-to-eye with half a century of photographs of stars, spread over more than 1,000 square metres.

A catalogue will accompany the exhibition.