All images by ©William Klein
“If I look back, I think most of the things I did – the films, the books, the collaborations with these magazines – were mostly by accident.” William Klein
William Klein is 94 years old. He has led many “accidental” lives, and has been a part of our artistic landscape for more than seventy years. With an eye to his legacy, and with great success, the International Center of Photography here in New York is currently exhibiting, “William Klein: Yes”, skillfully curated by David Campany, with a forthcoming retrospective monograph this autumn from Thames & Hudson.
The exhibition takes us chronologically and sensibly from Klein’s beginnings to today. A native New Yorker and son of immigrants, Klein would later emigrate to Paris, where he was deeply influenced as a painter under the tutelage of Fernand Léger. Later, embracing the artistic freedom of the Bauhaus School, he would move on to abstraction and stumble into photography.
Klein is widely recognized for his Fashion photography and distinctive, wide-angled, street photography (rightly so), but as the ICP exhibition reveals, William Klein was fearless in his other artistic pursuits. Whether he lacked the technical skills or had never done it before–he went for it. Painting, Film, Design, Photography and beyond, William Klein continues to engage it all with compassion, wit and an uncompromising belief in Beauty. That’s no accident. –Lane Nevares