The Cannes film festival is arguably one of the most exhausting events in a paparazzo’s diary. The schmoozing, the boozing, the cruising and the sheer stamina involved in taking pictures with your elbows has finished off many a dilettante photographer. Not so Emanuele Scorcelletti, Italian-born doyen of the Cannes paps, whose pictures continue to capture the gloss and glitz of the annual bun fight.

Scorcelletti’s association with the event goes back to 2001, when he was given exclusive access by the festival’s president, Gilles Jacob, to the dressing rooms and hotel suites of the stars. His candid pictures, now published in a new book – Le Festival de Cannes Vu par Emanuele Scorcelletti, published by Michel Lafon – convey the humanity as well as the razzmatazz of the event from his privileged position.

Since 2002 Scorcelletti has enjoyed a close professional relationship with Sharon Stone, a Cannes veteran. He won a World Press Award for an impromptu portrait of the star he took that year. “I was standing at the top of the stairs,” he recalls. “She was on the red carpet. She did a spontaneous movement and I just took the picture.” Stone was delighted. “Amazing,” she said with characteristic Hollywood modesty. So for the past six years she has allowed Scorcelletti to follow her as she struts round the festival. And these days, of course, her photo opportunities tend to outshine her movies.

In 2006, Scorcelletti’s wings were clipped when the authorities prevented photographers from going backstage for security reasons.

But he continues to return to the festival, with breathless enthusiasm, every year.

“Cannes is crazy,” he says. “I go because I love the movies and the stars. I’ve always been close to the action. Emotions run so high. When it’s all over, you feel tired, empty, because there has been all this excitement, and then nothing. It’s as though you are alone in the world.”

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