The famous American photographer William Klein has just died on Saturday September 10 at the age of 96.
The American photographer William Klein, who died on Saturday at the age of 96 in Paris, revolutionized fashion photography and urban photography, with “punch” images reflecting the feverishness and violence of cities, during a long career devoted also to the cinema.
Photographer but also painter, documentary filmmaker and graphic designer, William Klein is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He passed away as a retrospective exhibition of his work at the International Center of Photography in New York came to an end.
Inspired by the raw aesthetics of reportage and the sensationalist style of tabloids, William Klein has shaken up the codes of street photography, but also of fashion, by being one of the first to bring models out of the studios.
Deframings, exacerbated contrast are present in his work, essentially in black and white, where young boys brandish weapons at point-blank range and where scowling faces are displayed in very close-up, sometimes blurred.
“Like a Boxer”
“William Klein photographed like a boxer”, for Alain Génestar, director of the specialist magazine and the Polka gallery.
Born on April 19, 1926 in New York into an Orthodox Jewish family, the young American discovered Europe while doing his military service and settled in France after meeting the model and artist Jeanne Florin, with whom he would share her life until her disappearance in 2005.
At the time, he devoted himself to painting, after having studied with Fernand Léger, and imagined himself as an architect for a time.
The trigger occurs when he wins a Rolleiflex, his first camera, in poker: he begins to machine-gun Parisian monuments. His first photos, rather abstract, caught the eye of Alexander Liberman, artistic director of Vogue, who offered him a collaboration. William Klein is 26 years old.
Crackling Satire
From this return to the native land, eight years later, was born a cult book, the caustic “Life is good and good for you in New York”, released in France in 1956, but long disdained by American publishers, hostile to the idea to see New York as “a dump”.
Thanks to this book, Federico Fellini notices him and offers him to be one of his assistants on Cabiria Nights.
He took the opportunity to produce a book on the Eternal City. Moscow and Tokyo will follow for a long cinematic interlude, beginning with “Who are you, Polly Maggoo?” in 1966. The film is a scathing satire on the world of fashion, which Klein frequents sporadically, and always with derision.
William Klein also made more than 250 advertising films that marked their era, notably for Citroën, Dim, Saupiquet, Renault, Ricqlès…
Then it will be time for political battles with documentaries like “Far from Vietnam” (1967) and portraits, the most famous of which is “Muhammad Ali the greatest” (1974). “This black boxer, converted to Islam, had a real political dimension”, said the photographer.
Malcolm X
In the plane that takes him to Miami to meet the boxer, at the start of the project, William Klein meets the black leader Malcolm X (assassinated in 1965).
“It was the only free seat, because no one wanted to be near him. We got along very well”, said the one who was very interested in the condition of black Americans, the Black Panthers and the movements protesters.
From the 80s, he abandoned the camera for the viewfinder, produced several books (“Close up”, 1989, “Torino ’90”, 1990 and “In & Out of Fashion”, 1994), and signed the cover of an album by Serge Gainsbourg, where the singer appears in drag, a cigarette in hand.
“My motto”, recalled the photographer, “while doing the (book on) New York was: ‘Anything goes’. It always suits me. No rules, no prohibitions, no limits”.