A new book reveals the strange and complicated relationship Amy Winehouse had with the paparazzi.
In “Amy: A Life Through the Lens,” two photographer brothers say that the army of snappers who followed the tragic singer — who died in 2011 — would lend her money, act as “an extra layer of security,” helped her handlers track her down when she went missing, and even took pictures for Winehouse just so that she could check her outfit.
But Darren and Elliott Bloom could also snap at the paparazzi who covered her short and tumultuous career. The brothers even write that Winehouse’s father, Mitch, “hired” them as her “official paparazzi,” offering them access to her in return for deleting unflattering photos of her and helping “get Amy out of certain situations without the press hounding her.”
In the Omnibus Press book, co-written with Matt Trollope, the Bloom brothers say that their gruesome pictures of a bloody Winehouse after a wild fight with then-husband Blake Fielder-Civil “prolonged Amy’s life” because “shortly afterwards, her security was tightened up considerably.”