William Klein

William Klein

Biography
William Klein was born in the good ol' month of April, on the 19th, in 1928, which makes him 82 years old today. He was born in New York, but in his late teens he moved to France. He trained as a painter with Fernand Léger, and found success, but he clearly moved to photography, which is what he is known for today.

Significance
He is a fashion photography and photojournalist, and he often used photojournalistic approaches in his fashion photography. The concepts behind his photography were often ironic, and he used unconventional methods of photography in his lighting and framing. He also utilized motion blur often and played around with different lenses. He also experimented with putting photography and painting together. He was hired to photograph New York at the same time as photograph a fashion spread. This might be the reason his fashion photography is so street-driven. He was also not interested in fashion, so he used the opportunity to create the art he wanted to create, which led people to see fashion photography as a whole new type of artistic expression. He later stopped his photography and became a filmmaker, making several documentaries, but returned to photography in the 80s.

Art Historical or Photographic movement
Klein had interest in abstract painting, which is interesting that he would also be interested in photojournalism as they are both very different ways of telling a story

Rievew
Minor White's review of William Klein's "New York", a series of photographs Klein took while visiting his birthplace. White, a photographer himself, did not enjoy Klein's work, and called it "vulgar" and that it captured the "bawdy, gaudy and tawdry". He states that Klein did not photograph a city, but used cheap photography to show the vulgarity of life.


Composition
Klein used unconventional framing, making photos look more like journalistic photos even when they were fashion photographs. He also used motion blur a lot on faces and the bodies. I think this is another aspect of his interest in photojournalistc style. He would overexpose much of his film, which led to the blurriness. His use of high-ISO film made his exposures very grainy.

Concept
Klein was interested in creating an ironic and ambivalent look at fashion, probably because he was not particularly interested in it, and didn't take it as seriously as others in the industry. For his New York series, he was interested in photographing it in a way that hadn't been done before and his "foreign" look at the city gave him a different perspective, as he'd been out of the country for six years.

Method
Klein played a lot with high light-sensitive film and different lenses on his camera to get different affects. As he was not trained as a photographer, a lot of his photography was very experimental.

Motivations
Klein photographed fashion, but as he wasn't interested in fashion, his got his motivation for it by using the opportunity to make great photographs. He often has his models on the street. He also liked breaking the rules and challenging authority, which he learned from his teacher, Fernand Léger.

 My Opinion
I think that William Klein should be very happy with his life because it seems like he does what he feels inspired to do and he was successful. His passions changed throughout his life, which is okay. He didn't stay with an artistic medium that he was tired of, but went to a new one. Eventually he came back to photography when he rediscovered how much of his early photography he liked.