After graduating early from high school, he began studying sociology at the City College of New York. Terms of Use. An excerpt from Aaron Schuman's interview with William Klein from Aperture Issue 220. By the time William Klein made his first film Broadway by Light in 1958, he had already revolutionised one medium with his first photographic book, Life Is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels, published two years earlier. Read the complete interview in Aperture magazine. William Klein: Black and white, of course. How beautiful they are, and what an obsessive, brainwashing message they carry. In … But nobody else was really interested in them. Then he wrote me a letter saying that the film was ten years ahead of its time, that he related to it very strongly, and that he felt we had a great deal in common. I was just getting ready to do Mr. Freedom, and I wrote back immediately, saying that I was trying to raise money for my new film. This, you suspect, is the real story of William Klein's life: work as fun, with a little bit of confrontation thrown in. On Broadway by Light (1958) and Orson Welles. “By the tone of his voice, I could tell that he had just woken up, and was reluctant to join me,” Schuman said. Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online. Apr 22, 2019 - In his living room in Paris, William Klein flips through the new edition of his book, Tokyo, which just arrived from Japan. But when I looked more closely, I thought they weren’t so hot as all that, and the only photographers that impressed me were [Irving] Penn and [Richard] Avedon. William MP Klein is Associate Director of Behavioral Research in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute. Privacy Policy The work of the 89-year-old filmmaker and photographer is still just as hard-hitting as when it was first created, especially his satire of American jingoism. See available photographs, prints and multiples, and paintings for sale and learn about the artist. So I turned the bathroom in the hotel I was living in into a darkroom, and had access to a darkroom in my apartment. I looked at the fashion magazines, and I was really convinced that I couldn’t do anything like what the fashion photographers were doing; I mean, I thought their technique was beyond my reach. The couple were Anémone and André Dussolier; it was her first commercial role and one of his first parts as well. william klein’s retrospective, the eyes of william klein at the quad cinema, runs until march 13, 2018. Memories. William Klein is a man of two cities: New York and Paris. He said reasonable and unreasonable things, but in my zeal to make a statement — and also because it was an Algerian government production — I censored the craziness. – William Klein (1990) In an interview with Klein (in his Aperture Monograph book), he shares how much American publishers abhorred his work: “In the 1950s I couldn’t find an American publisher for my New York pictures,” he says. Get the best of Aperture in your inbox every day. “His assistant pleaded, ‘But he’s come all the way from England!’”. In his living room in Paris, William Klein flips through the new edition of his book, Tokyo, which just arrived from Japan. WK: I thought it was kind of bullshit photographing a dress, because I couldn’t care less. Recently, Klein has been revisiting some of his first experiments with still photography, abstractions from the early 1950s, some of which were exhibited at his London gallery last fall. Anyway, I think it’s the first Pop film. Interview with the photographer and film-maker William Klein in his Paris apartment in December 2012. He’s a prick, actually; I know him pretty well. Explore. WK: I dream about a million things. Finally, Klein entered the room, eyes wide and shining. Klein, eighty-seven, had been up until four thirty in the morning the night before and was having a rest. The rest were just part of a system, and the more I looked at their photographs, the more I felt that there weren’t any really interesting ideas behind them. AS: Before shooting any fashion photographs for the magazine, you also published a series called “Mondrian Real Life: Zeeland Farms” in Vogue in 1954. An excerpt from Aaron Schuman's interview with William Klein from Aperture Issue 220. It was a film that actually made me some enemies in the fashion world (laughs). (1965-1966) and Stanley Kubrick. I went up to him and said, “Listen, I’ve just shot a film. But now, if you want to win an argument about a film, you can always say it’s a comic strip reference. They reminded me a little bit of the Dutch houses in Pennsylvania, and I learned that Mondrian had lived there during World War I. I thought that there must be some relationship between what he saw there and what he was doing later, so I photographed them. But Ali was something else. New York is a million things, and you just see the seamy side.” So I thought I would do a film showing how seamy New York was, but intellectually, by doing a thing on electric- light signs. But you know, fashion magazines at that time were the monthly dose of culture that women would get—theater, painting, exhibitions of all kinds—so those photographs fit in with the philosophy of Liberman. So when I went back to New York, I had an idea of doing a book. Advertising In fact, his first film, a short with a boxer, was an extension of a picture story that he did for Look magazine; I remember having seen it when it came out. It was something l did in my schizo-militant period, an agit-prop film. Afterwards, I went from New York to Paris on a boat. Little Richard was down and out at the time, and he dreamed of being a black Billy Graham. There are thirteen sequences, and I tried to do each one in a different movie style. And everybody is so thankful for this super spectacle. William Klein (American, b. April 19, 1928) is a photographer best known for incorporating unusual elements into his photographs and videos. His photos have been described as being a lyric combination of black humor, acerbic social observation and daring graphic invention.’ This isn’t New York – too ugly , too seedy and too one-sided.’ Aperture Magazine - September 15, 2015 When writer Aaron Schuman first arrived at William Klein’s apartment, five stories above Paris’s rue de Médicis, he was ushered into Klein… When the film was to be done, they were to produce Little Richard. I did this book on New York: black-and-white, grungy photographs. He was at the Algiers festival, saw what I was doing, and asked if I would do a film on him. Photography. He was exhibiting his paintings, and people were saying, “Oh Jean-Luc, you have to come to my studio—I have some nice paintings to show you.” And he would say, “Of course!” which is so little like him. It was a way of making a living. Well, there was this outfit that had the idea of hawking Bibles to unions for members who died, so instead of sending flowers they would send these thirty-, forty-, or fifty-dollar Bibles. In 1946 he joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in Germany, where he won his first camera in a poker game. Jean-Luc Godard was there, it was a Saturday, and there was an art opening. A great watch to check out over this weekend! A lot of French critics said it wasn’t realistic. William Klein (born April 19, 1928) is an American-born French photographer and filmmaker noted for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography. Why did Little Richard walk out of the film? I was scared myself. In this excerpted portion of their conversation, he speaks about his remarkable career, now in its seventh decade, about dreaming in black-and-white, and his celebrated fashion photography. Shawnee Union 1,058 views. And I never got an answer! With the fashion designer Jean-Paul Gautier, I did a fake documentary about street-singing, clichéd Paris in which he dressed a whole neighborhood of a few hundred people — in the marketplace, the whores and the pimps, everyone. I never got the money to make this film, but I had a government advance. FAQ I was a primitive, and the photographs I was taking for myself were at the level of zero in terms of the evolution of photography. I thought that the other photographs that I was doing—the abstract photographs, the realistic photographs, the New York photographs, and so on—were more interesting. All Work is Copyright Of Respective Owner, Otherwise © 2021 Aperture Foundation. So I developed just a part of it about this model couple in a model apartment who were being tested night and day — a science fiction farce. so the Bible people put him under contract for all media work. Those who didn’t think I took them seriously enough. In Zaire, in 1974, they were saying that George Foreman was unbeatable and that Ali was over the hill. A month shy of his 85th birthday, the influential postwar photographer, filmmaker, painter and graphic artist sat down for an interview with WWD. WK: It wasn’t a problem, just an observation I had to make. 6:58. William Klein is one of the twentieth century's most important photographers and film-makers and. AS: Did you enjoy working for such magazines at that time, when they had an important cultural influence as well as being about fashion? Thanks to Jonas Petermann for sending over the link! The idea of grotesque stylization wasn’t accepted. Mac DeMarco and Julian Casablancas on TikTok, Mozart, and Chick-fil-A The Quiet Sex Appeal of Andy Warhol’s Nudie Drawings When I would do a session of fashion photographs my wife would ask, “What was the fashion like?” and I would say, “I have no idea.”. But once I had the opportunity to take the negatives and print them my way, I realized that I could use what I had learned—about graphic art, painting, and charcoal drawings, and so on—in my printing. AS: I was just looking through some of your old magazines, and saw that the first body of work you published in Vogue was selections from Black and Light. I guess my position is pretty marginal everywhere — then and now. William Klein (b.1928) was born in New York City. WK: Yes, my wife inherited a house on the Dutch and Belgian frontier. - William Klein His photographs; often blurred or out of focus, his use of high-contrast prints, high-grain film and wide angles, shocked the established order of the photography world. Photographers Tom Kiefer and Alejandro Cartagena. Cassius was the clown and didn’t have a chance. William Klein is one of the twentieth century's most important photographers and film-makers and. 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