#diggzy

I wrote many words about fandoms and celebrity culture already, but I’m still thinking about it.

The pap Matt Diggs is in the news because he photographed Rihanna and Rocky’s pregnancy reveal.

The New York Times yesterday and today discusses how Rihanna & Diggs have teamed up to sell a fiction of intimacy:

[…]

(From NYTimes, Jan/Feb 2022)

The phrasing “a way for celebrities to communicate with their fan base and community” simplifies a pretty complex relationship. It makes it sound quite one-directional: celebrity and Diggs together create a product for fans to consume.

What’s left out is that while fandoms may appreciate photos from any source at all, they absolutely know when a photo is staged. They know this is part of the persona that the celebrity is crafting for public consumption. And usually the photo like this is not a finished product but a starting point for much more intricate and elaborate stories, crafted by fans, that co-opt (rather than merely consume) details from the photo.

Last year in June 2021, Diggs discussed with Vogue how he builds rapport with clients/subjects:

This description makes it seem that Diggs’s entire calculation is based on maintaining a celebrity’s comfort to stay in her good graces. Again, it sounds like he works with the celebrities to trick fandoms into buying carefully crafted public personas.

BUT that is not the whole story! Later in this same June 2021 Vogue article, Diggs explains that he negotiates his base of consumers, too:

(From Vogue, June 2021)

What Diggs doesn’t say to either the NYTimes or to Vogue—and Vogue chose not to follow-up and ask—is why he likes to provide “stan armies” with shots. What is the benefit to him of having fandoms watch his IG account when his money comes from elsewhere, i.e. from selling the photos to tabloids?

I do think Diggs gave insight into an answer several years ago in this 2015 New York Post interview:

NY Post, Nov 2015

Here he hints at the closeness of paparazzi and (the most intrusive members of) fandoms, how they work together at times. The closeness underscores how fans and paparazzi are, on occasion, doing the same thing—albeit with different motivations. This quot also suggests that Diggs knows that he plays a role in celebrity culture that’s a bit more dynamic than simply creating product for whole-cloth consumption. He’s more of a conduit through which celebrities and fans create stories together.

I think Diggs has pivoted mostly to staged, streetwear photoshoots. He’s been interested in elevating his image, I suppose.

But he hasn’t left his old M.O. completely. Just a month after his June 2021 Vogue interview was published last year, in July 2021, he sold these photos of Tom & Zendaya to PageSix:

@diggzy

Here Diggs was essentially back in 2015, working with fans (specifically bypassing the celebrities themselves) both to gather content and create the next installment of the Tomdaya saga. Even the caption—“The Couple We’ve Been Waiting For”—tells a narrative of celebrities and their fandoms that has past and present tenses (have been waiting) and includes Diggs himself as a character (we).