William Klein

William Klein (1926-2022) was one of the most influential and revolutionary photographers of the twentieth century, whose radical approach to street photography, fashion photography, and filmmaking transformed each of the fields in which he worked. Born in New York City in 1926, Klein served in the United States Army during and after the Second World War, an experience that eventually brought him to Europe. After his discharge he settled in Paris to study art and to become a painter, working under Fernand Léger and initially pursuing an abstract painterly practice that would inform the visual freedom of his later photographic work.

Klein returned to New York in 1954 and photographed his native city with an unprecedented raw energy that produced his landmark 1956 book Life is Good & Good for You in New York. Considered too radical by American publishers, the book was first published in Paris, and it became one of the most influential photography books of the twentieth century, opening entirely new possibilities for street photography and photojournalism. Klein followed it with equally inventive photographic books on Rome, Moscow, and Tokyo, establishing himself as one of the most important urban photographers of his generation.

Klein worked for Vogue magazine during the 1950s and 1960s. Clothes and fashion never interested him. Instead he took advantage of the opportunity to experiment with the picture-taking process itself, and he introduced entirely new techniques into the world of fashion photography. He employed wide-angle and long-focus lenses, used flash and multiple exposures, embraced natural rather than artificial lighting, and even incorporated motion blurs. Fashion photography had never seen the likes of William Klein, and as a result of his innovations the field would never be the same again. Klein's work in photography was decidedly revolutionary, and he remained a nonconformist throughout his life.

Alongside his photography, Klein built a substantial career as a filmmaker, producing celebrated fashion satires such as Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? of 1966 and important documentaries including Muhammad Ali, the Greatest of 1974. He also created painted contact sheets that transformed his own photographic archive into a new hybrid art form. He lived and worked in Paris until his death in 2022, and his photographs and films are held in the leading museums worldwide. Klein was once quoted as saying:

Anything goes.