Legendary Photographer William Klein Turns 90

HackelBury Fine Art
Mar 27, 2018 2:25PM

William Klein will celebrate his 90th birthday this April, giving us the perfect opportunity to reflect on the artist's pioneering work as a photographer and filmmaker.

William Klein will celebrate his 90th birthday this April, giving us the perfect opportunity to reflect on his pioneering work as a fashion, city, and abstract photographer and as a filmmaker.

Klein’s 90th birthday coincides with William Klein: Fashion + Light at HackelBury Fine Art. The Fashion + Light series originally appeared in Vogue in 1962 and has only been recently fully rediscovered. Klein brings the movement and action that is ever-present in his city and street photography to the studio setting with Fashion + Light. For example, model Dorothy McGowan reads a newspaper made out of light in one photograph. In another, she puts on a coat made only of light. In high-contrast black and white, the series is playful and striking.  

Fashion + Light celebrates two key components of Klein’s oeuvre: fashion photography and light abstraction. Klein started making abstract light images in 1952. On the strength of this work, Alexander Liberman invited him to join Condé Nast in 1954. With an assured income from Condé Nast, Klein was able to embark on a personal project of street photography, which he published in 1956 as Life is Good and Good for You in New York, now acclaimed as one of the most important photo books of all time. That same year, Vogue Magazine printed several of his most iconic fashion images. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Klein’s work continued to appear in Vogue Magazine and helped to popularise the use of wide angle and telephoto lenses in fashion photography.  

Installation image from William Klein: Fashion + Light at HackelBury Fine Art, 2018

This past year Klein’s work was exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris in the exhibition Photographisme and at 21_21 Design Sight, Tokyo as part of the exhibition New Planet Photo City. The Eyes of William Klein, a retrospective of his films, was shown at the Quad Cinema, New York in March.

William Klein’s work is held in major museum collections including the Art Institute, Chicago; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and many others. His work has featured in numerous retrospective and major museum shows including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Tate Modern, London. William Klein currently lives and works in Paris.

Installation image from William Klein: Fashion + Light at HackelBury Fine Art, 2018

William Klein: Fashion + Light is on view at HackelBury Fine Art until 2nd June 2018.

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HackelBury Fine Art