Nadja Sayej
New Book: Paparazzi Bitch

A Backstage Pass

Art stars, fashion luminaries, and celebrities, like Lady Gaga, Catherine Deneuve, Spike Lee, Tilda Swinton, Karl Lagerfeld, and many more, are captured in candid moments during glittering galas, film premieres, and major events, like the Venice Film Festival, in the glamourous Forbes writer and photographer Nadja Sayej’s new book, Paparazzi Bitch. The book offers a backstage pass into the lives of this era’s pop culture icons and is a celebration of celebrities shot from the female gaze.

She is not, in fact, a paparazzo. As a culture and fashion journalist, stylish Sayej has access to celebrities, assigned to conduct interviews and invited to cover the exclusive events they attend worldwide. “I don’t have to hang out in front of a celebrity’s home and wait for them to come out, in order to get a photo, in order for me to sell it, in order for me to eat,” she laughed. However, she uses paparazzi techniques, which involve high-flash photography, spontaneous moments, and capturing somebody in action. “It has a sense of energy to it compared to a posed photo where everybody’s trying to control perfection, which doesn’t actually exist in real life.”

 

Yoko Ono, Dita Von Teese, Susan Sarandon & Bill Nye 

Sayej has published six other books, including The Celebrity Interview Book, a compendium of some of her interviews with famous folks like Yoko Ono, Dita Von Teese, Susan Sarandon, and Bill Nye. Paparazzi Bitch is her first photo book. Why now? “Because people don’t like to read anymore; they’re just obsessed with Instagram,” she jokes. Actually, Sayej always wanted to share the photos that she talked about in her previous book, Red Carpet Ho, which comprises comedic stories about the difficulties and fierce competition she experiences as a female red-carpet photographer in this male-dominated field. “You have to have very sharp elbows, and you have to be very fast to compete among a sea of men,” she explains of this unique world most of us just see on the news. “So I put my photographs together, capturing what the female gaze is, when you think of celebrity photography. Because it’s considered to be a male thing, as predator, with actresses as prey.”

 

Karlie Kloss in the Ladies’ Room Line, Karl Lagerfeld (gasp) Smiling

One of Sayej’s techniques for capturing wonderful off-the-cuff moments in these chaotic environments is to step away from the crowd of jostling photographers and, as the famous person is moving along, simply ask: “One more shot for the lady photographer, please?” That’s how the photo in the book of supermodel Karlie Kloss waiting in line for the ladies’ room at a gala happened. “You can see that in action. She turned around, and she’s looking at me and rolling her eyes. It’s so funny.”

The book includes a somewhat controversial photo of a smiling Karl Lagerfeld taken in Paris in the winter of 2018, shortly before he died. “He was very gracious to everybody at this event, and a lot of fashion publications wrote about the fact that he was smiling, and had teeth missing, but none dared to publish the photo.” Apparently, in his later years, Lagerfeld never smiled for photos. “And now we understand why; he was an older gentleman, and he had missing teeth,” says Sayej. Her own feeling about this is that he was having fun, why not show him smiling? “I understand why they didn’t want to publish it, but it just shows you the power that he had over the fashion media.”

 

Flight to Venice for Cate Blanchett

An unforgettable experience was getting to photograph Cate Blanchett, someone Sayej had long wanted to shoot, at the Venice Film Festival in August 2020. A friend sent an invitation to a private event at which Blanchett would appear, and though this was a time when people were not yet widely vaccinated against Covid, she went. “I was crazy enough to get on a plane, because I wanted this photo of Cate Blanchett so badly.” Sayej was one of only three photographers in attendance, thanks to the pandemic, so there was no pushing and yelling. When Blanchett stepped on the red carpet, she said, “Wow, isn’t this dignified?”

 

A Career on Her Own Terms

Sayej has carved out a unique freelance journalism career. A Toronto native, she studied art, went to journalism school, then began covering arts for the Globe & Mail and other publications. When the 2008 recession hit, she decided to move to Berlin, where she had friends. She stayed for seven years, and there became a foreign correspondent for major outlets like Architectural Digest, Vice, and Vanity Fair London. Fluent in French, she next spent two years in Paris, her introduction to the fashion world, followed by New York, where she is currently based.

Paparazzi Bitch contains ten years of photos, beginning in 2011. “I think that if you look back at this book 50 years in the future, it really captures the zeitgeist of what pop culture meant and says a lot about a certain decade.” nadjasayej.com