Photographer Peter C Borsari, whose celebrity snapshots over three decades included candid moments of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Jack Nicholson, has died. He was 67.
Borsari died on Monday due to complications from elective knee surgery, long-time friend Laura Luongo said. Borsari underwent a knee replacement at the hospital last week, his personal assistant Dana Baker said.
A native of Zurich, Switzerland, Borsari moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s and quickly joined an elite cadre of successful celebrity photographers. His photos of Taylor and Richard Burton in Mexico launched his career.
Borsari was often hired by Hollywood studios to take photos at parties and weddings, including the nuptials of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner and the wedding of Harry Hamlin and Nicollette Sheridan.
”Peter was never a paparazzi photographer. He was a photojournalist,” Luongo said. ”Don’t call him a paparazzi or he’ll come down from heaven and get you.”
Borsari provided photographs for magazines, newspapers and industry publications worldwide. His clients included top studios, including Columbia, Tri-Star, Warner Brothers and Universal.
Motion picture and television producers, including George Schlatter, also hired Bosari to document and publicise premieres, parties, fund-raisers and television specials.
”When it comes to true Hollywood in its glory days, he was there,” said People magazine photographer Michele Stueven, who met Borsari in 1979. ”Those were the days when there were only about five people doing this.
”The one thing I always loved about him was that he was a real European, James Bond kind of guy. He had that international thing. There was something very glamorous about him and I think that’s why celebrities took to him.”
In his later years, Borsari lived off his archives.
”He was very meticulous and very organised,” Stueven said. ”He has historic files that are unmatched.”
Borsari, who was not married and had no children, is survived by his stepmother, Mona Borsari, and brothers Eugene and Ricardo, who live in Switzerland where Borsari will be buried, Baker and Luongo said. — Sapa-AP