The worldwide obsession with celebrities spawns one of the most fascinating and feared by-products of pop culture -- paparazzi. Paparazzi are photographers who tirelessly hunt celebrities, public figures and their families for the opportunity to photograph them in candid, unflattering and at times compromising moments. What began as simple "street photography" is now a high-stakes game of cat and mouse that plays out in the everyday lives of the paparazzi's celebrity prey. As our cultures' voracious hunger for celebrity snapshots grows, so do the prices of these photos and the risks paparazzi take to get them. Many ethical, legal and privacy issues arise out of this questionable business.


Most stars try to avoid the paparazzi.

How do paparazzi get those shots? How do they sell their pictures? To whom do they sell them? How do they get away with what they do? In this article, HowStuffWorks looks at those questions as well as the laws surrounding this issue and how celebrities are fighting back.

What's in a Word?
The word "paparazzi" is derived from a character in the Fellini film "La Dolce Vita." The character, a photographer named Paparazzo, reminded Fellini of "a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging."

Fellini's inspiration for the character was the famous Italian "street photographer" Tazio Secchiaroli. Fellini consulted Secchiaroli for research while developing the script for his classic film.

Secchiaroli became famous as a photographer when he captured candid photos of the former Egyptian King Farouk turning a table over at a restaurant in rage. On the same night, Secchiaroli also snapped photos of actor Anthony Steele in a public spat with actress Anita Ekberg. These photos started a trend in European publications, moving away from posed promotional shots of celebrities and toward surreptitiously captured candid photos.