Ron Galella invented the job we now know as “paparazzo.” And forty years later, he is still one of the most sourced photographers in the field. Hardly a month goes by without the world’s premiere magazines calling in some pictures from his vast trove, which is stored in hundreds of archival boxes in the basement of his New Jersey home. One of the last holdouts of analog photography, Galella has countless negatives of the bold-faced names of the past four decades, most notably the one he calls his “muse”: Jackie Onassis. Captured in the faraway time before celebrity publicists, Galella’s prey is shown elegant, but un-airbrushed.

In New York, Galella’s new tome from Italian arthouse publisher Damiani, one bears witness to the comings and goings of the jet set, shot from behind luggage racks and across taxi queues as they arrive in New York. A testament to the city that everyone loves to hate but always comes back to, eventually. Galella captures the then-famous and our still-famous traveling into, out of, and within the Big Apple.

‘Ron Galella: New York,’ out this Spring, is published by Damiani and The Row NYC.