William Klein biography
New York
William Klein was born in New York in 1928 into a family of poor jewish immigrants. His father’s clothing business had folded in the 1928 crash, although his extended family – mainly lawyers - was wealthy. Growing up in the ’30s Klein also experienced anti-semitism first-hand, both from students at school and on the street, he was a jewish boy in an irish neighborhood. he always felt alienated from mass culture. His friends remember him as a bright, sarcastic kid who liked art and the humanities. He adored the moma, museum of modern art, which was like a second home to him from age 12 on. And at the age of 14, three years ahead of his classmates, he enrolled at city college of new york to study sociology. At 18, he spent two years in the US army, stationed in germany and france as a radio operator, before completing his course.
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Paris
In 1948 he enrolled at the ‘sorbonne’ in paris. In 1949, Klein studied briefly with Ihote and Fernand Leger.
Leger encouraged his students to revolt and to reject conformity and bourgeois values, telling them that ateliers and galleries were obsolete and that they should go out and work on the streets. After marrying Jeanne Florin, he decided to remain in france and still lives and works in Paris. During the early 50s klein style was spare, abstract and architectural. The paintings from this period were deeply influenced by graphics, bauhaus, mondrian and max bill, which led Klein to try painting murals.
Milan
In 1952 Klein had two shows in Milan at the ‘piccolo teatro’ and at the ‘galleria il milione’ and began to
collaborate with the architect Angelo Mangiarotti, who commissioned murals on moveable panels that could be used as room dividers. In the same year, he started to collaboratewith the italian architecture magazine ‘domus’.
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Photography
As an artist using photography, he set out to re-invent the photographic document. His photos, often blurred or out of focus, his high-contrast prints (his negatives were often severely over-exposed), his use of high-grain film and wide angles shocked the established order of the photography world and he earned a reputation as an anti-photographer’s photographer. Inspired by moholy-nagy and kepes, he began to experiment with juxtaposing abstract painting and photography.
Alexander Liberman, painter and director of ‘vogue’ america met Klein at one of klein’s parisian sculpture shows and
was fascinated, both by his sculpture (kinetic light panels on photosensitive glass)and by the photographs Klein had recently begun to take. He invited klein to come to New York to discuss a job.
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Return to New York.
By 1954 he felt ready to return to new york for a visit and when Klein arrived, Liberman asked him what he would
really like to do. His answer was to photograph New York in a new way, a kind of photographic diary. As an american who had lived in europe for six years, he had become a hybrid – and new york to him was oddly foreign.
Liberman agreed, vogue would finance this as a possible feature, and Klein – who had never photographed fashion
before – was also, to his surprise, given a contract as a fashion photographer for the magazine.
Klein said: ‘I was a make believe ethnographer: treating new yorkers like an explorer would treat zulus -
searching for the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography.’ this book ‘new york’ – (‘life is good and good for you in new york…) was a scandal.. ’vogue’ was shocked by his view of the city – crude, aggressive and vulgar – and others saw it as photographically incompetent and he could not find a publisher in america.
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Photobooks
He took the work back to Paris and although the photographic establishment took a similar view, he managed to find a french publisher, editions Seuil, who believed in it and brought it out in 1956 (re-issued 1995). It was also published in Italy the same year. Klein’s book won the nadar prize. From 1960 to 1964, he produced three other books of photography:
‘Rome’ (1960), ‘Moscow’ (1964) and ‘Tokyo’ (1964); all are filled with raw, grainy, swirling yet stark images.
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Fashion Photography
From 1955 to 1965 Klein worked for Vogue. He preferred to photograph his models out in the street or on location.
he was not particularly interested in clothes or fashion, and used this opportunity to reasearch the picture making process by introducing new techniques to fashion photography, including the use of wide-angle and long-focus
lenses, long exposures combined with flash and multiple exposures -making fashion an area of innovation in photography.
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Film
From 1965 to the early 80s, he abandoned photography and primarily concentrated on film, making various documentaries: ’broadway by light’ (1958), ‘who are you polly maggoo?’ (1966), ’mr. freedom’, ‘muhammad ali the greatest’, ‘the little richard story’ (1979), ‘the messiah’(1999).
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Return to photography
Klein returned to still photography in the 1980s due to a renewed interest in his early work.his photographs of this period are characterized by his use of close-ups and wide angle lenses. During the 90s he continued to create mixed media works using painting and photography. He received the hasselblad prize and various retrospectives of his films were organized in new york and japan. he was awarded the agfa-bayer/hugo erfurt prize and created in & out of fashion, a mixed media project including drawings, photographs and film, which was published simultaneously with shows in london, Paris and New York. in 1997 he rephotographed New York and had shows in Barcellona and Paris. In 1999 he was awarded the ‘medal of the century’ by the royal photographic society’ in London. Currently he lives and works in Paris.
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Recent solo exhibitions
galleria carla sozzani, milan, italy 2000
scottish national gallery, edinburgh, scotland, 1999
fnac, paris, france 1999
grand manège, moscow, 1998
jane jackson gallery, atlanta, usa, 1998
pushkin museum, moscow, 1997
saint-gervais center, geneva, switzerland, 1997
caixa national foundation, madrid, spain, 1997
deichtor hallen, hamburg, germany, 1997
pouchkine museum, moscow, russia 1997
hamiltons gallery and british film institute, london, uk 1997
fondazione nazionale della fotografia, turin, italy 1997
