Frozen in Flashbulbs

Every 19th August, World Photography Day is observed across the globe — a celebration of the art, science, and history of the photograph that honours all aspects of the medium.

Nowhere is the power of photography more vividly felt than in the world of show business. From Hollywood glamour to Lollywood vibrancy, from red carpets to candid paparazzi shots, photography has been the silent partner of cinema, shaping how stars are remembered, adored, and sometimes scandalised.

The day invites a simple reckoning in showbusiness: films move, but reputations sit still. A single frame on a red carpet, a campaign, or a paparazzi snap can define how an actor is remembered long after the box office receipts fade.

The old studios knew the value of a meticulously crafted portrait. That logic hasn't vanished; it's merely migrated to platforms and phones. In show business, glamour is real, but so is the collateral. It remains a business built on images — carefully made, instantly shared, and, at times, painfully weaponised.

In the early decades of Hollywood, the likes of Greta Garbo and Humphrey Bogart were sculpted into icons not just by the films they starred in but by the carefully staged portraits circulated by studios. Those black-and-white prints — Garbo's enigmatic gaze, Bogart's cigarette-tinged cool — set the template for celebrity culture.

As curator and writer Dr Susan Bright notes of photography's recent history: "The smartphone and social media are the most significant changes to the medium over the last 20 years."

The observation is blunt: technology changed the circulation, not the stakes. The image still does the heavy lifting-selling a premiere, cementing a persona, telegraphing a comeback. In 2025, World Photography Day lands in an ecosystem where a look can travel the world before a publicist hits "approved."

No one understood the power of a single frame better than Richard Avedon, who spent decades photographing actors between fashion and cinema. His verdict was unsparing: "A portrait is not a likeness — it is — an opinion."

The contemporary heir to that mindset is Annie Leibovitz, whose celebrity portraiture has set the tone for magazine culture for 40 years. "In portraiture, you have so much leeway — You can tell a story."

Red carpets

If premieres are publicity, the red carpet is performance art — a theatre of photography. Stars arrive in couture gowns and sharp tuxedos not just for those in attendance but for the millions who will scroll through images online within minutes.

The ritual is as old as the Oscars themselves, but in the digital age, it has exploded into a 24/7 spectacle. Image architect Law Roach, who helped turn carpet strategy into pop-culture sport, frames a look as a message.

In discussing a recent star-making editorial, he cast the styling as a deliberate statement — an answer to critics, built visually, look by look. The subtext is clear: wardrobe and photography do the storytelling together.

That symbiosis explains why a carpet image — more than a soundbite — can spin off into memes, mood boards and trend pieces within minutes. Festivals and award shows know it; so do streamers selling shows through character-driven fashion beats.

Pakistan's lens

For South Asian stars, the image economy carries its own intensities. Pakistan's fashion scene has long produced photographers who understand celebrity as an editorial construction.

Tapu Javeri, a pioneer of fashion photography in Karachi, is frank about the vocation: "If you want to be a good photographer you have to have an eye for everything." It's an old-school ethos, and it still underpins the best commercial and celebrity work coming out of Pakistan.

There's a cost to the still frame's permanence. Once published, images detach from context, travel faster than corrections, and live longer than apologies. In South Asian celebrity culture — where politics and entertainment often overlap — images can also become proxies for culture wars.

That's why some stars have grown more selective, stepping around paparazzi zones and communicating directly via controlled visuals. Bright's point about social platforms isn't just tech talk; it's power analysis. The camera hasn't changed as much as who gets to circulate the pictures first.

For photographers and stylists, the stakes are similar: one cover can set a season's tone. And for audiences, the still image remains the easiest door into a star's world: a poster on a wall, a magazine on a coffee table, a pinned post. The moving image asks for time; the still asks for attention — and keeps it.

Price of fame

The camera's relationship with celebrities has always been double-edged. World Photography Day also prompts reflection on the relentless gaze that hounds film stars. The paparazzi boom of the 1990s and 2000s, fuelled by tabloids and glossy magazines, often reduced stars to hunted figures.

Princess Diana's tragic death in 1997, following a high-speed chase by photographers in Paris, remains the darkest reminder of what happens when the hunger for images oversteps boundaries.

More recently, stars such as Kristen Stewart have spoken out against invasive photography. "You can't think one thing about yourself and then have a million people say something different. Your sense of self gets disjointed," she told Vanity Fair.

Today, the monopoly of star photographers has been shattered by the ubiquity of smartphones. Every fan in a concert hall or outside a film set is, in effect, a potential paparazzo. The result is a paradox: stars have never been more photographed, yet they've also never had more control over which images the world sees.

As AI enters the conversation, celebrity photography faces new challenges. Fake "photos" of actors are now circulating online with alarming realism, sparking concerns about consent and authenticity.

A closing frame

From Monroe's timeless allure to Shah Rukh's outstretched arms, from the blinding flashbulbs of Cannes to the humble selfies stars post in their downtime, photography has always been cinema's closest companion.

World Photography Day often coincides with the tail-end of the summer film festival circuit. At Venice, Toronto, and Telluride, as much attention is lavished on the flashes of cameras as on the screenings themselves. It doesn't just celebrate cameras; it acknowledges their leverage.

The still image is the most portable unit of fame — simple to share, hard to outrun. If that sounds stark, it is. But it's also the reason a great photograph can lift a performance into legend, and why a careless snap can swamp a career for months. In showbusiness, the lens is never neutral. Use it — or it will use you.