Marcus Bury \u2013 a gallerist who first began working with the photographer in the 90s, and, as part of husband and wife-run London-based gallery HackelBury, continues to work with Klein\u2019s estate \u2013 describes him as \u201cconfrontational\u201d, a label that could be applied to both his work and his ways. \u201cA lot of people are frightened of William because, like his photographs, he was very in-your-face,\u201d Bury says. \u201cHe liked challenging people. He was fairly relentless. He liked insulting people; it was one of the things he enjoyed. It was like, \u2018How much pushback are you going to give?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But, \u201che wasn\u2019t making fun of people,\u201d Bury insists \u2013 a line that street photographers who have walked the trail Klein blazed have found themselves negotiating, whether that\u2019s Martin Parr\u2019s controversial lens on class, or Bruce Gilden\u2019s aggressively close street portraits. Klein, says Bury, was less an observer than in the fray: \u201cHe had the ability to really promote chaos as well as joining in with the chaos,\u201d he says. It\u2019s a characterisation that aligns with some of Klein\u2019s most famous images, such as the pugnacious street portrait Gun 1, New York, 1955, where a young boy, face grimacing, points a gun directly into Klein\u2019s lens, matching its energy in a quick-draw duel of sorts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the camera was Klein\u2019s weapon of choice, a close second was his lawyer, whom Bury describes the photographer as having \u201con speed dial\u201d. \u201cKlein successfully sued a whole lot of big names, and was very protective of his work,\u201d the gallerist adds. Such a taskmaster was Klein that when Bury first suggested a show at his London gallery, Klein said he\u2019d do it on the condition he secured a museum show. More than a decade later, at the opening for his blockbuster show at the Tate Modern in a dual headliner with Japanese photographer Daid\u014d Moriyama, Bury remembers \u201cthe lawyer, myself and William were in the basement and he had a 40-page legal document and I had to sign every single page.\u201d<\/p>\n
He could be funny and quick-witted too: At one edition of Paris Photo, when Klein was well into his eighties, Bury remembers a fan bringing along a pile of records to sign \u2013 Klein\u2019s work has famously appeared on record sleeves for the likes of Serge Gainsbourg and Faith No More, among others. \u201cWilliam signed this large pile of records, and he came to one record which was an image by Richard Avedon. Without looking up, he just signed Richard Avedon. Then it was just like, \u2018next.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Klein\u2019s humour verged into satire in his 1966 film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (Qui \u00eates-vous, Polly Maggoo?), an anarchic mockumentary send-up of fashion and celebrity media. Though American Vogue launched his career \u2013 legendary art director Alexander Liberman discovered Klein\u2019s work in Paris and set him up in New York, facilitating Klein\u2019s street photography in that city \u2013 Klein did not hold back from poking fun at the eccentricities of the fashion industry in the film, which included one suspiciously Diana Vreeland-esque character. \u201cHe challenged the fashion industry, and that\u2019s when he lost his job at Vogue because he took it a step too far,\u201d says Bury. \u201cHe mocked her heavily in the film \u2026 He quite enjoyed shocking people.\u201d<\/p>\n Klein\u2019s attitude towards his own fashion photography further revealed his feelings about the industry. On a visit to Klein\u2019s Paris studio, Bury discovered a locked cupboard that the studio manager hadn\u2019t opened in about 20 years, at Klein\u2019s instruction. Bury suggested they open it while the photographer was out to lunch. There he found older work that Klein felt off-kilter with how he perceived his own oeuvre, most notably one body of work titled Fashion and Light.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWilliam was quite curt with us,\u201d says Bury. \u201cHe goes, \u2018No one\u2019s allowed into that cupboard.\u2019 But I was like, \u2018William, there are these really great images.\u2019\u201d Bury convinced him to have one print made \u2013 they blew it up and had it framed on black powder-coated aluminium with black plexi around it \u2013 \u201cso it\u2019s sort of floating in a black space.\u201d Klein eventually signed off on ten strong images.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWilliam was very much involved in all aspects [of how his work was handled],\u201d explains Bury. \u201cHe didn\u2019t hand over anything apart from printing photographs\u201d \u2013 which were produced by the same master-printer who made Magnum Photos co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson\u2019s prints. But the contact sheets, painted with red marks, were all Klein, a signature that married his background as a painter and \u2013 with their sequential shots \u2013 his work as a filmmaker. All three were brought together at the Tate Modern show, which included works from Klein\u2019s initial career as a painter, restored and getting their first outing in more than 50 years, alongside his satirical and political films, including his final film Messiah (Le Messie, 1999). That last film paired Handel\u2019s classic sacred oratorio with global, modern-day imagery of human struggle, joy, and routine.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has a choir in prison singing the Messiah, and then he\u2019s got a police unit on the outside of prison singing the Messiah,\u201d explains Bury. \u201cIt\u2019s quite an amazing piece of cinema in that it\u2019s quite contemporary. It\u2019s almost like an artwork.\u201d At times both darkly satirical and transcendently beautiful, it deals with themes of consumerism and faith, and feels aptly existential for his ultimate moving-image offering.<\/p>\n One of Bury\u2019s all-time favourite Klein images makes the red marker a physical subject of the photograph itself in a boldly combative 2004 portrait of footballer Eric Cantona. Shirtless and confronting the camera, Cantona appears with a red marker pen in his hand, drawing a St George\u2019s Cross from his forehead to below his belly button. In black marker the words, \u2018You play to fight the idea of losing\u2019 are scrawled across his chest.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very William Klein,\u201d says Bury. \u201cI don\u2019t know anyone else who\u2019s got a portrait quite as strong as that. It challenges you. It\u2019s like, what are you going to do? It\u2019s in your face. I think it’s quite a remarkable image.\u201d<\/p>\n Klein felt an affinity with sports stars, and became friends with a number of them, including Muhammad Ali back when he was still going by Cassius Clay, later making a film about him; tennis star Bj\u00f6rn Borg, who he also made a film about; and Venus Williams, later a friend. The photographer boxed as a middleweight for his regiment while serving in the US Army in Europe, and played tennis recreationally throughout his life, always drawn to one-to-one sports that force participants into direct confrontation, mirroring his own relationship with his subjects as a photographer. And within those sports, it was the characters with fearless reputations he seemed drawn to the most.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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Muhammad Ali, 2001\u00a9 William Klein Estate. Courtesy of HackelBury Gallery, London<\/p>\n<\/a>
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Hat with Five Roses, Barbara Mullen, Paris\u00a9 William Klein Estate. Courtesy of HackelBury Gallery, London<\/p>\n<\/a>
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Eric Cantona, Paris 2003\u00a9 William Klein Estate. Courtesy of HackelBury Gallery, London<\/p>\n
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Dorothy + Light Coat, 1962\u00a9 William Klein Estate. Courtesy of HackelBury Gallery, London<\/p>\n