{"id":390458,"date":"2026-01-25T23:55:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T23:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/390458\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T23:55:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T23:55:20","slug":"life-is-good-good-for-you-william-klein-was-in-your-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/390458\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Is Good & Good For You – William Klein Was In Your Face"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo me, the act of taking a photograph is a moment of trance in which you can capture many hundreds of things happening at the same time and through which you can feel them and see them, consciously or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 William Klein (1926 \u2013 2022)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"William
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Club Allegro Fortissimo, Paris, 1990<\/p>\n

Some of these dynamic\u00a0 \u2018In Your Face\u2019 pictures from American photographer William Klein<\/a> (1926 \u2013 2022) appeared in his book Life Is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956)\u00a0and in the pages of Vogue<\/a> magazine.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"William<\/p>\n

Anne St. Marie and Cruiser, New York<\/a> (Vogue), 1958<\/p>\n

\"1926-2022
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Gun 1, New York, 1955<\/p>\n

\u201cOne time, Life asked well-known photographers to find the people that they had photographed two generations earlier, and they asked me to find the boy with the gun. But actually, when I took that photograph I was just walking down the street, I saw some kids playing cops and robbers, and I asked three of them to look tough, so it was a setup. But the idea of finding them again was crazy. I didn\u2019t go along with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 William Klein<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"William
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

William Klein: Atom Bomb Sky, New York, 1955<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a primitive, and the photographs I was taking for myself were at the level of zero in terms of the evolution of photography. But once I had the opportunity to take the negatives and print them my way, I realized that I could use what I had learned \u2013 about graphic art, painting, and charcoal drawings, and so on \u2013 in my printing. So when I went back to New York, I had an idea of doing a book. I was twenty-four or twenty-five, something like that, and when you\u2019re twenty-five you can do that sort of thing; if you decide to do it, you just do it. So I turned the bathroom in the hotel I was living in into a darkroom, and had access to a darkroom in my apartment. I washed the prints in the bathtub, and now these prints are considered \u201cvintage prints\u201d\u2014they\u2019re worth a lot of money.<\/p>\n

\u2013 William Klein on improvising for Life Is Good & Good for You<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"William
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Tokyo Stock Exchange, 1961<\/p>\n

\"William
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Federico Fellini Drinking Coffee, 1956<\/p>\n

\u2018I had no photographic training at all. When I was working in Paris, at Fernand L\u00e9ger\u2019s studio, he\u2019d say, \u201cYou guys are all obsessed with collectors and museums and galleries, but all that\u2019s bullshit. What you should do is take a look at what painters did in the 15th century in Italy.\u201d There were books on the Quattrocento, but they were expensive, and we didn\u2019t have money so we stole them. We took what L\u00e9ger told us seriously. Later, I ran into a young architect who had done panels painted on both sides separating a space. I photographed the setup as I had somebody turn the panels. The geometrical forms in the paintings blurred. Photography gave another aspect to the compositions of geometrical paintings. Then I started to become interested in what you could do in the darkroom, and I realized that this blur was adding something to painting. So I said, \u201cMaybe I could do something with photography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018What\u2019s funny is that it\u2019s usually the other way around. A guy does paintings, and discovers that his paintings are pretty shitty, and he says, \u201cWhat else can I do?\u201d He goes to photography, which is a step down. For me, it was the contrary.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2013 William Klein\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"William<\/p>\n

Simone & Nina, Piazza di Spagna, Rome (VOGUE), 1960<\/p>\n

\"William<\/p>\n

Yellow Coat + Bus + Crane, New York, 1958<\/p>\n

\"William<\/p>\n

Simone d\u2019Aillencourt \u2013 Painting, Coffee, Rome, (VOGUE), 1960<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t part of any movement. I was working alone, following my instinct. I had no real respect for good technique because I didn\u2019t know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn\u2019t matter to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 William Klein<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"William<\/p>\n

Selwyn Theatre, 42nd Street, New York, 1955<\/p>\n

\"William
\n\"t-shirts\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Baseball Cards, NYC 1955<\/p>\n

Via: Aperture<\/a>, Interview<\/p>\n

Copyright: The Estate of William Klein \/ Courtesy of In Your Face at Peter Fetterman Gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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