The paparazzo who just said no

PARIS - Years ago, François Apesteguy was not just a paparazzo -- a photographer who snapped pictures of celebrities in their private moments. He was one of the best paparazzi.

He was even a celebrity himself, featured in the 1980 documentary film "Reporters," in which he is seen hassling actor Richard Gere over taking Gere's photo. It was just a couple of years after that, Apesteguy said, that he could no longer live with himself.

"I was feeling bothered and I wasn't sure why," he said. "I asked myself, 'Why do you do what you do?' I couldn't answer at first, then I realized I participated in the stupefaction of the public."

He left the paparazzi business, turned to news and project photography, and said he has felt better ever since. He has been a voice of conscience in French public debate since the death of Princess Diana, speaking up on television and in newspapers about the dangerous cycle he feels photojournalism has caught itself in.

"It's too easy just to focus on the photographers. They're just employees," he said in a telephone interview. "They were ordered to be at the Ritz that night, to harass. And the agencies they work for are dependent on the magazines [that buy the pictures]. And the magazines are dependent on the powerful press groups. At the top of the pyramid, enormous profits are made. The rest is just a chain of underlings."

Everyone in the chain, however, is avoiding the issue when they say they give the public what it demands, he said.

"It is we who drug the public," he said. "If there were no drug dealers, there would be no addicts."