\n<\/p>\n
There is no such thing as an off-duty moment\u2014at least not during the Cannes Film Festival<\/a>, where paparazzi are stationed in airport arrivals, hotel foyers, beachfronts and anywhere else a celebrity might reasonably appear during the event\u2019s two-week stint.<\/p>\n And yet, while the resulting images are hardly as candid as those shot by the documentarian Derek Ridgers<\/a> during the late 1980s and \u201990s, they are often more compelling than any red-carpet photograph: Bella Hadid<\/a> licking ice cream on the banks of the Plage du Midi in a Hushidar Mortezaie dress patchworked from keffiyeh fabric, or waving from the windows of the H\u00f4tel Martinez in a lace-up Versace fall 2003 dress.<\/p>\n Of course, these off-duty looks are often just as carefully orchestrated as a custom-made gown, but seeing them in the wild restores a sense of personhood and place that the red carpet\u2014no matter how distinct the Croisette might seem\u2014flattens. The red carpet, after all\u2014even with the looming fa\u00e7ade of the Grand Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Lumi\u00e8re and the visible ranks of photographers flanking it\u2014is ultimately a sort of geography-less space: an interchangeable backdrop reproduced the world over.<\/p>\n