William Klein

What makes Klein so different to my other chosen artist, Henri Cartier-Bresson, is that his approach to his subjects is far more up-close-and-personal. He doesn’t shy away or hide his camera, choosing to remain unseen by his subjects, but instead he shoots from directly in their faces, often causing a visible display of outrage from some, and a deliberate playing up to the camera from others.

This article by Laird Borrelli-Persson from June 2022 explores Klein’s fashion career from the perspective of Vogue itself.

As well as producing over 250 television advertisements, he directed his first feature film in 1966, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, which was a satire mockumentary on the world of fashion….

… followed by numerous documentaries, including Grands soirs et petits matins (1978)…

… and Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1969).

I was very consciously trying to do the opposite of what Cartier-Bresson was doing. He did pictures without intervening. He was like the invisible camera. I wanted to be visible in the biggest way possible.

– William Klein, on his photography in the early 1950s (https://photoquotes.com/quote/i-was-very-consciously-trying-to-do-the-opposite-o)

“…It’s fake violence, a parody. I asked the boy to point the gun at me and then look tough. He did, and then we both laughed. [I see it] as a double self-portrait. I was both the street kid trying to look tough, and the timid good little boy on the right.”

– William Klein, when recounting the moment the image was taken. (https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/photographs/william-klein-1928-2022-65/163335)

Criticism

Overall, after searching thoroughly, I could not find any real criticism of William Klein’s work. There was a lot of criticism at the time of its publication, however, as it broke all the rules of photography. Nowadays, this kind of disobeying the rules has had an amelioration. It now symbolises a pioneering and revolutionising spirit; someone who wasn’t afraid to change people’s minds. This is, of course, a worthy interpretation, as it is what Klein achieved. However, it does lead to a lack of diversity in interpretations as people are now afraid to criticise this work because they fear being attacked or (worse still, in the rather precocious areas of the photographic community) seen as if they ‘do not understand’ his work and are merely amateurs. I find that, as ‘Sebastian’ (the author of the article I read as criticism of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work) stated, there is often an unspoken rule that famous and admired photographers such as Klein and Cartier-Bresson cannot be criticised. Those who would criticise are seen as ‘amateur’ and so their opinion is not worthy. This is not true, of course, as anyone who views an image is a consumer and therefore their opinion matters, so to only worship and praise the work of these photographers is to create a stifling culture of non-criticism and non-discussion. Discussion and debate is, after all, what stimulates society and to be without it is to lack individual intelligence and thought.