A paparazzo's farewell

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This coming Friday afternoon at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion, friends and family of the late Sydney photographer Peter Carrette will gather to pay their last respects to a well-loved member of Australia’s media community. Sixty three-year old Carrette died over the weekend at his Bondi apartment/office from a suspected heart attack, almost two years to the day that another Sydney paparazzo, Dave Morgan, died in his sleep at the age of just 53. Much will be made on Friday of UK-born Carrette’s career, which spanned five decades, kicking off in a Fleet Street darkroom when he was just 15, traversing various war zones before settling into celebrity photography in Australia - with a bang. In 1969, Carrette authored what has been described as “the most audacious, arguably the most invasive, picture in Australian photo-journalism”, international sales for which reportedly netted his then employer just US$18,000 (US$104,000 in today’s currency): an image of a comatose Marianne Faithfull inside the intensive care unit at Sydney's St Vincents Hospital. Faithfull had been in town visiting her then boyfriend Mick Jagger while he was shooting Ned Kelly, allegedly caught him in the arms of another woman and overdosed on heroin. "Everyone wanted the picture - I went and got the picture" Carrette told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2005. In order to do so, he dressed in a doctor’s coat rented from the Elizabethen Theatre Trust and sneaked into the building. It might have gotten Carrette kicked out of the Australian Journalist's Association, but it's the stuff of Gonzo legend really.

Full frontal nude images of 18 year old Miranda Kerr to be released because her publicist "failed to make payment" - Tito Media

miranda kerr, 2002/screen cap jasperglavanics.com

And Nicole Kidman thought she had problems with the Australian paparazzi pack. On Saturday, frockwriter revealed the name of the photographer whose eight year-old topless images of a then 18 year-old Miranda Kerr had been shopped around by Sydney photo agency Tito Media: Jasper Glavanics. Our sources reported that the highest bidder was London’s News of the World tabloid, after Tito Media asked the Kerr camp to match the NOTW’s price to get the shots off the market and they declined. Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper (which, like NOTW, is also owned by News Ltd) paid what it described as a “nominal fee” to reproduce two of Glavanics’ shots in a story yesterday entitled “Miranda Kerr’s naked fury”. Well if Australian gossip blog, OMFG! Is to be believed, the shots are not only soon be published, they are in fact full frontal. Why should OMFG! know what it’s talking about? Because in case you had any doubt about the snarky tone of the post, a couple of quick net searches reveal that OMFG! is operated by Tito Media.

Miranda Kerr's "naked fury", Jasper Glavanics' pounds of flesh

miranda kerr, 2002/screen cap jasperglavanics.com

Fascinating insight into the grubby world of celebrity tabloids in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph newspaper tomorrow. The first edition is now on select newsagent shelves and inside the back cover, in The Insiders double page gossip column, is a half page story on Miranda Kerr. No, not a pregnancy update, but a (censored) topless image of an 18 year-old Kerr taken in 2002, together with the headline "Kerr's naked fury". The story goes on to feign outrage and outline how "an old friend" of Kerr's has "taken advantage" of her new-found celebrity to sell what are believed to be the first topless images of Kerr to a British tabloid for a "hefty" fee. The photographer is quoted as saying he previously refrained from selling the shots to a mens magazine because "they were too nice". So a Fleet Street tabloid is a far more tasteful alternative then? But while the photographer has got no problem with flogging eight year old topless images of teenage Kerr, he asked not to be named. Couple of points here.

Nicole Kidman digs in her fourth line of paparazzi defence

Much has been made of the so-called Great Wall of Sutton Forest, a 250m long, 2.5m high dirt wall erected by Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban on their Southern Highlands, NSW property Bunya Hill, ostensibly to keep the prying lenses of the paparazzi at bay from one exposed section of the property. Well frockwriter (who spends a lot of time in the region - and took this shot from the roadside) can report that the dirt wall has now been reinforced with a second, green, line of defence: a row of conifers that appears to stretch the length of the property on the western side of the front gates. Add to that the existing barbed wire boundary fence and the makings of a secondary fence in between the conifers and the dirt wall and, well, Jamie Fawcett may need to enlist the services of the 11th Panzer Division if he wants to plant any listening devices. No word on explosives being attached to any of the fortifications, but we'll keep you posted.