William Klein: Paris + Klein

William Klein always dreamed of living in Paris, like Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, and other like-minded artists and writers. In 1948, stationed by the United States Army in Paris, he stayed--and fled his family and America to become a painter. He quickly found another family and recognition for his talent. Today, one is tempted, like critic Anthony Lane, to say that he is "the American in Paris." PARIS + KLEIn gathers together hundreds of photographs shot by Klein from the time he first picked up a camera in the 1960s until he put it down, momentarily, to put together this book. In his signature color and black-and-white compositions, jostled to the brim with more information than a single camera lens was ever expected to take in, we find: men in the street, celebrities, demonstrations, fashion, the police, politics, races, the m tro, soccer, death. . .The whole life of a capital seen through the lively, acidic, melancholic, humorous, irnoical, and moving eyes of William Klein.

William Klein was born in 1928, growing up in the "mean streets" of Manhattan. At age 18 he entered the U.S. Army for a two-year stint (a year and a half of which were spent at the Sorbonne at the invitation of the French government), and then set himself up in Paris, where he worked briefly with Fernand Léeger. In 1954, after six years of painterly research, he returned to New York to embark on a guerilla confrontation with his estranged native city. The result was the remarkable photo-journal New York, which won the 1957 Prix Nadar in France but was never published in the United States. Over the next few years, Klein produced three new photo books and worked intermittently for Vogue magazine, then, in 1958, abandoned photography for for film and documentary work. In the 80s he returned to the still camera and produced three new photo books, followed by a new, greatly expanded version of New York, and a book on his films. Over the course of his multidisciplinary career, Klein has been honored with a Hasselblad Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation grant, a Grand Prix National in France, and an Agfa Award.