On Friday, hours after news broke that reality TV queens Kim and Khloe Kardashian descended in Mumbai for the Ambani wedding celebrations, the city’s paparazzi went into a frenzy. Only a handful of paps who followed the Kardashians from their hush-hush late night arrival at the Kalina airport to the Taj hotel in Colaba managed to get their glimpse. A hazy visual of Kim and Khloe being shielded by black umbrellas went viral on social media, but beyond that, no one caught their clear view.
Celebrity photographer Shreyas Tatkare, 24, parked himself in the pouring rain at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel for their exclusive money shot. The narrow road in front of Taj’s entrance was cordoned off with heavy security and Kardashian’s hefty bouncers flashed laser beams at the cameras to keep the shutterbugs away. Tatkare, who works with ace paparazzo Varinder Chawla’s team and freelances for dozens of film and entertainment platforms, was defiant to shoot the American influencers on their debut visit to India, come what may.
The Kardashians are one of the highest paid international celebrities and paparazzi shots of their appearance sell for hundreds and thousands of dollars.
“In Hollywood private security guards commonly use laser lights to distort the camera focus. If the beam falls on a digital SLR or iPhone, then it's game over,” the young photographer says about the struggle he faced to shield his camera and iPhone from the laser beams in the rain all while dodging the security and elbowing other paps in the crowd. “I wanted Kim’s photo badly. I decided to get her photo anyhow.”
In Western countries, paparazzi are a huge part of the celebrity culture who pursue, sometimes at great risk, A-list film and TV stars, chart-topping pop artists or anyone famous and members of their families for private pictures, which are then sold to glossy magazines for thousands of dollars. The disturbing phenomenon has posed a danger to the lives of several celebrities who try to hide from the public eye and keep the physically aggressive paps away from invading their privacy. Princess Diana’s secret holidays with her lover Dodi Fayad and ultimately her untimely death in 1997 caused by the fatal chase in Paris, brought to light the ugly side of the paparazzi culture.
The invasive trend is slowly creeping into Mumbai’s showbiz and entertainment world. Most film photographers who have turned into paparazzi are mindful of the space between them and the stars. Though occasionally they too have stalked famous film stars like Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhat in in their private space.
Tatkare follows the daily lives of several film stars as they are out and about in the city by memorising their car's number plates. He used the same trick and followed the Kardashians' convoy and chased the cars after they returned from shooting an episode of The Kardashians for Hulu TV, aptly titled ‘Kim and Khloe take India.’ He waited for another six hours before he got the elusive photos of the sisters stepping out of the Taj: Kim dressed in a red Manish Malhotra lehenga with a plunging neckline and Khloe sporting dark glasses with a golden-hued Tarun Tahiliani ensemble. “I knew I could get good shots. I was lucky to get these photos because the Kardashians skipped the red carpet event at the wedding venue,” Tatkare says.
Photos and reels of the Kardashian sisters went viral and Tatkare earned handsomely for several such shots over two days of their stay. But beyond the quick buck, he is more proud of being one of the handful of Mumbai’s photographers to shoot pop stars Beyonce, Rihanna, and the Kardashian sisters all during the course of the weddings of Ambani’s three children.
The Ambani family’s big fat weddings in procession since 2018 -- heiress Isha’s marriage to Anand Piramal was the first, followed by her brother Akash’s ceremony with Shloka Mehta --have launched the careers of many young paparazzi, like Tatkare. The numerous wedding events gave the paps a chance to film Beyoncé who performed at a private concert for one of Isha’s pre-wedding events in Udaipur, former US first lady Hillary Clinton, former UK Prime minister Tony Blair, and Adam Levine’s Maroon 5 who crooned at Akash’s wedding in Mumbai.
The latest wedding of of Reliance group’s youngest scion Anant and Radhika Merchant, beginning with the lavish pre-wedding soiree in Jamnagar in March, followed by the sangeet and the actual wedding in July, is the grandest of all. Like the rest of the country, the paps seeing the events up and close have their jaws dropped.
From Rihanna, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, to a bevy of Bollywood superstars, Hollywood celebrities, pop stars, spiritual leaders, politicians, and business tycoons who descended in Mumbai from around the world.
“Usually, we spot so many celebrities in one place only during an award function,” says freelance photographer Datta Kaudare, guarding his chair in the second row of the packed media pit at the Jio World Centre on the day 4 of the wedding. A decorated partition adorned with the letters ‘AR’ separated the media from the lavish wedding set. Celebrities, influencers, and famous guests arriving at the venue posed against the background of Ramayana verses in Sanskrit before joining the celebrations inside. Fifty other photographers and camera persons are standing behind him, positioned to get the best shot before the celebrities arrive on the red carpet. “Celebrities are making 2-3 dress changes in a day. It is not just any wedding, it is a huge event,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. The Ambanis allotted a special area inside the venue for the media personnel to film the celebrity guests. A buffet of snacks, beverages, energy drinks, desserts, lunch and dinner was served throughout all five days to the media.
Shihas Siyad and Sinan Shaji founders of the Movie Man website, came specially from Kerala to cover the wedding. The duo was stunned to see the scale of the celebrations and the number of celebrities lining up to mark their attendance. Importantly, they had a hard time figuring out Mumbai’s unique paparazzi culture propped by Public Relations representatives and talent managers. The culture of photographing the rich and the famous persists in the city thanks to the hordes of film stars, TV actors, directors, producers, singers and fashionistas residing here. The paparazzi circle these celebrities to shoot their unique looks, as they make their way in and out of airports, gyms, salons and film studios.
“This is a national event, and we thought it would be good to show the visuals back home. We mainly came to film the South Indian celebrities,” says Siyad. A three-minute compilation of the wedding visuals clocked over 2 million views on their Facebook page. They were further elated to get shots of superstar Rajnikant, Malayalam actor Prithviraj Sukumaran, former star and deputy chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Pawan Kalyan and Telugu actor Mahesh Babu with their families. “And of course, we also filmed Amitabh Bachchan and family and Shahrukh Khan,” says photographer Nandu Prasad Beit, also from Kerala.
The opulent wedding has also undoubtedly given the paparazzi their biggest paydays. publications — mostly tabloids — from as little as Rs 2000 to as much as Rs 50,000.
“Yes, there’s a lot of money to be made,” concedes Viral Bhayani, Mumbai’s top paparazzo whose Instagram handle boasts 11 million followers that transcends an even wider reach. While many celebrities strategised their appearance for the wedding, several industrialists and politicians wanted to avoid the limelight, he adds. “Global leaders, politicians and industrialists do not inform us about their arrival so that we can get their shots. We have to work hard for their photos. There’s a lot of pressure about the protocol and restrictions from private security. We face a lot of heat, some ask us to delete their photos.”
For the Ambani wedding, Bhayani and his team were on their toes, crisscrossing the maddening traffic in pouring rains, spending sleepless nights and waiting for hours at their designated spots. From their arrival of the guests at the airport to their stay in the hotels, attendance for the events at the Ambani family’s residence Antilla in Malabar Hill and finally to the wedding venue at the Jio World Centre in Bandra, his team of camera persons were the constant companions bringing glimpses of the glitz and glamour of the wedding on the phone and TV screens.
The videos from Bhayani’s brand of the different events of the five-month-long ‘AR wedding’ have gone viral across social media platforms. Over the five days of the wedding, his official handle uploaded 400 reels and photographs all of which saw high engagement, grabbing upwards of 5 lakh views. “Many reels had over 50 million views, which is wow for me,” Bhayani says.
He and others are, however, quick to caution that the paparazzi’s job although appears glamorous, entails an unseen amount of hard work, pressure and patience. There is cut-throat competition among the photographers to be the first ones to get hold of exclusive shots of celebrities.
Freelance photographer Dinesh Rajak was juggling to shoot, edit and upload videos and photos of the star guests on the red carpet, all by himself. “It’s all about being quick with the job. I have to write an attractive caption and add a trending song on the spot to make sure the reel goes viral. A slight delay in hitting the Send button can get fewer views,” he says. Rajak uploads the content on his Instagram handle where he has 337,000 followers. He also sells photos and reels of celebrities to clients and also indulges in paid partnerships on his page to promote certain content. These photos and reels are further edited on Bollywood websites, Instagram handles and YouTube channels like Voompla, Miss Malini, Pinkvilla, Instant Bollywood, and Peeping Moon generating countless rehashed versions.
In the male-dominated field of celebrity and entertainment photographers, Ashwini Sawant stood out as a rare female photographer. Sawant who has been a photojournalist for 18 years and now works as a freelancer providing photos to an India-based news agency, says the job has become challenging with the entry of untrained Instagrammers and social media photographers, looking to earn quick money with viral content. “Youtubers and Instagram photographers have made it a business of likes and paid sponsorships. Our profession is no longer respected,” she complained.
The Ambani weddings and paparazzi share a symbiotic relationship of give and take. The family initially provided somewhat limited access to shoot the weddings of twins Isha and Akash from a close distance, but for Anant and Radhika’s wedding, the paps were given a stage to document various bits of the wedding. The paps in turn earned money promoting the Ambani family and the celebrities with the glitzy images and reels that have captured the attention of onlookers worldwide.
On the fourth day of the wedding, Neeta Ambani, in an unprecedented gesture, personally thanked the paps and invited them to attend the wedding’s last day as a part of the family. The barrier that existed between the paps and the Ambani family was going to be dismantled and the photographers were given a chance to be part of the lavish celebrations. “After all you have made this wedding reach every corner of the world. We are thankful to you,” a family member said.
