Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, was a superstar of unprecedented and epic proportions, and is still the best-selling recording artist of all time.

An icon raised in the spotlight, but ever reclusive and terribly shy, Jackson was the ideal subject for paparazzo extraordinaire Ron Galella, the nation’s most famous celebrity photojournalist. Galella shot Michael from his early days in the Jackson 5 right up to the weeks before his untimely death. Finding intimate moments with the legend offstage, he captured candid, beautiful, unguarded portraits of the man behind the mask and a lifetime of style and glamour.

Over the years Galella also captured Michael in the company of fellow celebrities—drawn, like Galella himself, to the biggest and brightest star of them all—including Muhammad Ali, Diana Ross, Chuck Berry, Brooke Shields, Jane Fonda, Liberace, Quincy Jones, Barry Manilow, Emmanuel Lewis, Liza Minnelli, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Sophia Loren, Sylvester Stallone, Ted Kennedy, Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston, Donald Trump, Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, and Marcel Marceau. He was able to find the personal side of Michael in images of him with his children, his sister Janet and the rest of the Jackson family, and even his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles.

In a tribute to the life and memory of Michael Jackson, Galella has compiled his comprehensive body of images of the King of Pop for the first time ever in Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson.

Published: 2009