Movies About Photographers

Every film here puts a photographer at the center and lets the pictures drive the story: war photographers deciding what to frame, fashion shooters chasing an image, a photo lab clerk who sees too much, and the real lives behind famous pictures. The test for a place was simple: take the photographs out and the film falls apart. Fiction and true stories sit side by side, along with documentaries about photographers whose work changed how we see wars, cities and strangers, and each entry says when a character is drawn from a real person. Films about painters and filmmakers belong on other lists, so a movie whose camera shoots footage rather than stills, such as Nightcrawler, is not here. La Dolce Vita gave the world the word paparazzi, but its hero is a gossip writer, so it is left out too. Entries run in order of release, from Hitchcock's courtyard to the recent fight over who really took one of the most famous photos of the Vietnam War. For the ethics of the lens, start with Under Fire, The Bang Bang Club and The Stringer; for pure pleasure, Rear Window, Funny Face and Blow-Up.