AFTER 35 years amassing some 50,000 celebrity snap shots, “professional fan” Gary Boas has had the tables turned on him.
His life’s work has been collated into a book, “Starstruck,” with several shots currently on display at a hip SoHo art gallery. But suddenly this 48-year-old shy guy is a minor celebrity himself.
“It’s overwhelming,” he says at the exhibition’s opening Friday, during a brief respite from the popping flashbulbs that have dogged him all night.
“I just picked a hobby that I love. If I collected stamps or coins this would never be happening, but I suppose everyone has a fascination with stars.”
Boas, who grew up near Amish Country in Lancaster, Pa., says his fascination began early and quickly turned into a “monumental obsession.”
“It all started kind of by mistake,” he says. “I was walking down the street in Lancaster and I saw Robert Goulet on the street. I didn’t know who he was but I recognized him from the ‘Merv Griffin Show’ so I ran home and grabbed my camera. And I’ve never put it down.”
From age 15 on, Boas would talk his mother into making the 2½ hour drive to New York City, where he planted himself outside theaters, parties and restaurants and snapped candid shots of stars with his Brownie, a classic camera known for its cheap price and fuzzy photos.
He turned his lens on Broadway legends and silver-screen sirens, politicians and porn stars, rock gods and even the pope.
“Starstruck” is bursting with candid pictures of Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper, Greta Garbo, James Stewart, Truman Capote, Warren Beatty, Ella Fitzgerald, John Kennedy Jr. and Mick Jagger — just to name a few.
Although Boas’ photos are sometimes poorly framed and often blurry, it’s their very artlessness that has pop-culture aficionados and the art world buzzing.
Boas is bemused by the hoopla. But he acknowledges his snaps are valuable as mementos from a bygone era.
“Nowadays it’s like a cattle call — the stars are fed to the photographers and the shots are generic,” he says.
“I didn’t see it at the time, but there’s an innocence to these photos. The (subjects) are responding to me as a human being, they’re including me, they’ve stopped and chatted to me.
“That would never happen today. Celebrities are afraid of us; the fans are a threat.”
Boas says the secret to the rapport he built with his subjects was his polite approach — he didn’t “paparazzi them.”
“I come from a small town and my demeanor was always ‘small town,'” he says. “‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ still work — but they’re like curse words in Hollywood now.”
Boas should know. He’s managed to parlay his teen obsession into a pay job photographing celebrities for a stock photo agency and divides his time between Lancaster and L.A. for premieres, parties and press conferences.
But glitter no longer dazzles this lensman in quite the same way. “These days I’m not so starstruck,” he says. “Celebrities today don’t have an appreciation of celebrity — they have no sense of glamour.
“In the day, meeting someone like Jimmy Stewart, I was spellbound. When someone like Bette Davis walked in the door, you knew she was Bette Davis.”
He sighs wistfully. “I’m glad I started when I did. I photographed the legends.”
“Starstruck” is published byDilettante Press. Boas’ photos areon view at Deitch Projects, 75Grand St., through Feb. 26.