The great photographer, film-maker and iconoclast reflects on a life spent in pursuit of his personal vision
'People were terrified of him, as though it was the lion's den," the Vogue model, Dorothy McGowan, said of working with William Klein back in the 60s. At 84, Klein has mellowed somewhat, though he still tells it like it is. "People ask me why I never went back home to America," he says, when I meet him in his apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. "Have you seen those crazy right-wing assholes who want to be president? The place is so reactionary it just makes me angry. If I lived there, you wouldn't be interviewing me, I'd be dead from a heart attack by now."
Wearing patched, faded denim jeans and a baggy jumper, his mane of white hair thinner now, Klein moves slowly and unsteadily around his spacious but cluttered living room,...
'People were terrified of him, as though it was the lion's den," the Vogue model, Dorothy McGowan, said of working with William Klein back in the 60s. At 84, Klein has mellowed somewhat, though he still tells it like it is. "People ask me why I never went back home to America," he says, when I meet him in his apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. "Have you seen those crazy right-wing assholes who want to be president? The place is so reactionary it just makes me angry. If I lived there, you wouldn't be interviewing me, I'd be dead from a heart attack by now."
Wearing patched, faded denim jeans and a baggy jumper, his mane of white hair thinner now, Klein moves slowly and unsteadily around his spacious but cluttered living room,...
- 4/28/2012
- by Sean O'Hagan
- The Guardian - Film News
William Klein's first movie, a gleeful satire on the fashion industry, underlined his reputation as a brilliant, iconoclastic photographer
William Klein is one of the giants of post-war photography: his vibrant pictorial essays on cities like Rome, Tokyo and New York are among the most influential photobooks of the 20th century. Last week it was announced that he will be honoured as the recipient of the outstanding contribution to photography category in the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards.
Klein, 83, initially trained as a painter under Fernand Léger in Paris in the 1950s, before relocating to New York and, despite having no formal training, landed a job as a fashion photographer at American Vogue. There he earned a reputation as an iconoclast, using a wide-angled lens to often surreal effect and introducing movement and energy in the form of blurred motion into his street shoots.
His time at Vogue was the inspiration for his first feature film,...
William Klein is one of the giants of post-war photography: his vibrant pictorial essays on cities like Rome, Tokyo and New York are among the most influential photobooks of the 20th century. Last week it was announced that he will be honoured as the recipient of the outstanding contribution to photography category in the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards.
Klein, 83, initially trained as a painter under Fernand Léger in Paris in the 1950s, before relocating to New York and, despite having no formal training, landed a job as a fashion photographer at American Vogue. There he earned a reputation as an iconoclast, using a wide-angled lens to often surreal effect and introducing movement and energy in the form of blurred motion into his street shoots.
His time at Vogue was the inspiration for his first feature film,...
- 3/31/2012
- by Sean O'Hagan
- The Guardian - Film News
By Michael Atkinson
Like a missing-link hominid stepping out of the jungle, famous photographer William Klein emerges on 21st century DVD as the great bullgoose Art Film-era satirist we never knew we had. Hallowed for his still images and his documentaries, the Paris-based Klein also made three furiously hostile lampoons that were nominally released, ignored and then forgotten. Until now, you could only find "Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?" (1966), "Mr. Freedom" (1969) and "The Model Couple" (1977) in scruffy bootlegs from pro-am vendors like Pimpadelic Wonderland . and given the movies' paucity of reputation, you would've had little reason to do so. A busy '60s shutterbug for the French Vogue, Klein more or less fell in with the Left Bank New Wavers (Resnais, Demy, Marker, Varda) and the Panic Movement (Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor both show up in "Polly Maggoo"). But his perspective was New Yawk pugilistic, his humor was mercilessly...
Like a missing-link hominid stepping out of the jungle, famous photographer William Klein emerges on 21st century DVD as the great bullgoose Art Film-era satirist we never knew we had. Hallowed for his still images and his documentaries, the Paris-based Klein also made three furiously hostile lampoons that were nominally released, ignored and then forgotten. Until now, you could only find "Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?" (1966), "Mr. Freedom" (1969) and "The Model Couple" (1977) in scruffy bootlegs from pro-am vendors like Pimpadelic Wonderland . and given the movies' paucity of reputation, you would've had little reason to do so. A busy '60s shutterbug for the French Vogue, Klein more or less fell in with the Left Bank New Wavers (Resnais, Demy, Marker, Varda) and the Panic Movement (Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor both show up in "Polly Maggoo"). But his perspective was New Yawk pugilistic, his humor was mercilessly...
- 5/27/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
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