AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Grainy, blurred, close-up street photographs of New York, and fashion pictures for Vogue made out in the street
- Worked in
- Mostly black and white; color in some fashion work
- Camera
- 35mm camera with a wide-angle lens and slow film
- Also
- Painter and filmmaker (Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, 1966); city books on Rome, Moscow and Tokyo
- Start with
- William Klein: Yes (Thames & Hudson, 2023)
- Links
William Klein (1926–2022) was an American-born photographer, painter and filmmaker who lived in Paris for most of his life. His 1956 book about New York, full of grain, blur and faces close to the lens, changed street photography. He also took fashion photography for Vogue out of the studio and into the street, and later made many films.
The story
In 1954, on Broadway near 103rd Street in New York, William Klein stopped two boys. The older one had a gun. “It’s fake violence, a parody,” Klein said later. “I asked the boy to point the gun at me and then look tough.” In the picture, the gun is so close that it blurs, and the boy’s face is twisted with anger. Then the moment was over. “He did, and then we both laughed.”
Klein grew up in Manhattan. In 1946 the army sent him to Europe, and in Germany he won his first camera in a card game. After the war he stayed in Paris. There he studied at the Sorbonne and worked in the studio of the painter Fernand Léger. His first photographs were abstract experiments made in the darkroom.
Those experiments caught the eye of Alexander Liberman, the art director of Vogue. In 1954 Liberman invited him to work for the magazine in New York. After eight years away, the city felt both familiar and strange. “I knew the city but it was now in a different focus,” Klein remembered. “I had a camera but I barely knew how to use it.”
So the usual rules did not hold him back. With a 35mm camera and a wide-angle lens, he went close to people. Blur, grain and hard contrast stayed in the prints on purpose. At night he worked in a hotel bathroom turned into a darkroom and washed the prints in the bathtub.
Vogue found the pictures too dark and vulgar, and no American publisher would take the book. But in Paris the young editor Chris Marker persuaded Éditions du Seuil. Life Is Good & Good for You in New York came out in 1956, with Klein’s own layout, jacket and captions. A year later it won the Prix Nadar.
Many years later, Klein looked again at the boys on Broadway. He called the photograph a double self-portrait. One part of him was the angry New York street kid. The other was the sensitive boy who had moved to Paris. “I was both the street kid trying to look tough, and the timid good little boy on the right.”
The work
- 1926Born in New York City
- 1946Sent to Europe with the army; wins his first camera in a card game
- 1948Settles in Paris; studies at the Sorbonne and with Fernand Léger
- 1954Returns to New York to work for Vogue
- 1956Publishes Life Is Good & Good for You in New York; wins the Prix Nadar a year later
- 1958Makes his first film, Broadway by Light
- 1964Publishes his books on Tokyo and Moscow
- 1966Releases his first feature film, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?
- 2022Dies in Paris on 10 September, during his ICP retrospective
Lessons
Use the flaws. Klein kept grain, blur and hard contrast in his prints. Things other photographers called mistakes became his style.
Get close and take part. He did not hide. For Gun 1 he asked the boy to point the gun straight at him.
Make the whole book. For his New York book he chose the pictures, made the layout and jacket, and wrote the captions himself.
Try this: put a wide-angle lens on your camera, or zoom out on your phone, and walk a busy street. Get as close as people will let you. Keep the blurred and grainy frames, print ten of them small, and arrange them as pages of a book.
Gear
Klein rarely spoke about camera models. What is known comes from the International Center of Photography and from his own accounts.
35mm camera: his main tool for street and fashion work. He won his first camera in a card game while serving in the army in Germany in 1946.
Wide-angle lens: it let him work very close to people and fill the frame with the energy of the street. In fashion work he also used telephoto lenses.
Darkroom enlarger: he taught himself in the darkroom. Heavy grain, wild cropping and high contrast were made in the printing.
Books
William Klein: Yes (Thames & Hudson with the International Center of Photography, 2023). A 384-page retrospective with about 250 images, made with the big ICP exhibition of 2022. Klein himself directed the selection and design, and the curator David Campany wrote a chronological text. It covers his abstract paintings and photograms, street photography and photobooks, fashion work and films. The best single book if you want to see his whole career in one place.
Life Is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (Éditions du Seuil, 1956). His first book and the one that made his name. No American publisher would take it, so Chris Marker brought it to Seuil in Paris, with co-editions in London and Rome. Klein designed the layout and the jacket and wrote the captions, which came as a separate booklet. The pictures are grainy, blurred and close, full of children, shop windows and crowds. It won the Prix Nadar in 1957. First editions are rare, but the book has been reprinted, and it is essential for anyone who loves street photography.
Rome (first published 1959; revised 50th-anniversary edition, Aperture, 2009). In 1956 Klein went to Rome to assist Federico Fellini on Nights of Cabiria. When filming was delayed, he walked the city with Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and other writers and artists, and the walks became this book. Like the New York book, it has long, playful captions. The Aperture edition comes in two volumes in a slipcase, 224 pages, with a new text by Klein and fashion pictures from Rome never seen before.
Tokyo (Crown Publishers, 1964). A city book made in 1961 and published the same year as his Moscow book, with a preface by Maurice Pinguet. It shows Tokyo just before the 1964 Olympic Games: dancers, crowds, an action painter at work, office meetings. Many pictures run as full double spreads. A rare book today, and a good one for readers interested in Japan and in how Klein’s style travelled.
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