William Klein

William Klein (1928) started his artistic career in 1948 in Paris, where he trained as a painter. He discovered his passion for photography in the early fifties. In 1954 he started to work for the fashion magazine Vogue. This launched Klein’s career as a fashion photographer, a journey marked by his ambivalent and ironic approach to the world of fashion. Although he worked for Vogue until 1966, he did not consider fashion photography to be his real calling but rather what he calls “serious photographs”. By that he meant uncompromising, unadrned documentaries about large cities like New York, Rome, Moscow, and Tokyo. Books about these cities enabled him to enjoy great successes. Around 1961 Klein gave up still photography in favor of motion pictures. His politically committed and unconventionally produced motion-picture contributions put him in the position of a maverick. Only at the beginning of the eighties did Klein start to take pictures again. At this time his earlier shots were rediscovered and given recognition.