William Klein

An international jury at Photokina 1963 voted William Klein one of the 30 most important photographers in the medium’s history. He became famous in Europe immediately upon publication of his strikingly intense book of photographs, Life Is Good for You in New York – William Klein Trance Witness Revels, for which he won the Prix Nadar in 1956. Klein’s visual language made an asset out of accidents, graininess, blurriness, and distortion. He has described his work as “a crash course in what was not to be done in photography.” Klein employed a wide-angle lens, fast film, and novel framing and printing procedures to make images in a fragmented, anarchic mode that emphasized raw immediacy and highlighted the photographer’s presence in the scene.

Born and raised in New York, William Klein graduated from high school at age 14 and subsequently studied sociology at City College of the City of New York. After two years in the United States Army, where he worked as an army newspaper cartoonist, he attended the Sorbonne, Paris, on the G. I. Bill. He studied painting briefly with Fernand Léger and has lived in Paris since 1948, working as a painter, graphic designer, photographer and filmmaker.