Starstruck
Photographs From a Fanby Gary Lee Boas
Dilettante Press, 320 pp., $27.95 (paper)
Being in love with your idols is not what it used to be. The mad hyperventilation and tears still come for sure, but all the hugs and kisses in the relationship between celebrities and fans are clearly gone. Gary Lee Boas’ Starstruck, a collection of cheap celebrity photographs made between 1966 and 1980, show the pop world in its beautiful youth, that time before stars became “super,” and when they could smile at freakish young men with Instamatic cameras on the sidewalk without fearing for their lives. With their dead-on knack for capturing the complexities of the subjects’ characters and physiques, Boas’ pictures themselves are extraordinarily telling in a million and one ways. If nothing else, they seem to insist that celebritites were even constructed of a different material, less antibacterial and synthetic, than they are nowadays. Witness the smart charm of an irresistable Dustin Hoffman, smiling with a zit at the end of one eyebrow. Or the grande dame Gloria Swanson, living somewhere between majesty and horror, her face pulled back tight and covered in paint. And then there’s the less shimmering side: a barely pre-coital Barry Manilow stretching his grey and sweaty body over some unsettling vamp in the back of a limo. Loyal and lovable, Gary Boas achieves every fan’s greatest dream by smiling and panting behind his small camera and making the stars seem like his very own family. And the greatest part is that they’re all smiling back.
This article appears in March 24 • 2000.