Thames & Hudson, London, United Kingdom, 2022. 384 pp., 200 color illustrations, 10x13¼".
"America is so full of shit. Did you get that?"
— William Klein, The Genius of Photography, episode 4
—Thomas Roma, The Genius of Photography, episode 4
It was a little over 20 years ago, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Paris, and I went to La Maison Européene de la Photographie to see a screening of experimental films made by renowned modernist photographers. It was part of a month-long series airing each Sunday afternoon, this day featuring works by Bruce Davidson, Cartier-Bresson and William Klein. All I remember about this screening is Broadway by Light by William Klein, which I found totally mesmerizing. Before this screening, I must confess I had little knowledge of Klein, only knowing his work through Szarkowsi and with no direct experience of his books or films yet. Seeing Broadway by Light for the first time was revelatory. It reminded of the brilliantly dizzying Man with a Movie Camera, and, like this film, when I saw Broadway by Light I was immediately aware it was a remarkable breakthrough in visual experiences. Klein’s film is like an animated action painting, assembled with rich and beautiful colors, but also like a good Coleman Hawkins solo, effortlessly guiding us through space, syncopating its rhythms in unexpected and joyful ways.
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I was renting a studio right around the corner from La Maison Européene de la Photographie at the time, so over the next couple of weeks I put down my cameras and headed back to the museum to study their collection of Klein’s books — I saw Moscow, Rome, Paris + Klein, and Life is Good & Good for You in New York, even a screening of Mister Freedom. Strangely, my investigation of Klein was just a Parisian love affair, because truthfully, regretfully, I haven’t spent time with his work again until recently picking up the new book William Klein: Yes, the Thames & Hudson/ICP publication written by David Campany. But like that Parisian love affair, discovering this book has been intoxicating; it is so full of luscious reproductions of the photographer’s book covers, film stills, paintings and pictures from all his major books and portfolios. Accompanied by a clear, insightful, and at times even poetic biographical study of such a prolifically innovative artist, Klein: Yes is a definitive study of his work, also the last book developed before his death in September 2022.
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With his text, Campany creates a dynamic portrait of Klein, depicting him as a relentlessly creative mind, willing to venture into any kind of opportunity. Klein’s resume includes time studying under French painter Fernand Léger, groundbreaking photobooks, collaborations with Eldridge Cleaver and Little Richard, advertisements for Vogue and manufacturers like Citroën, experiments as an abstract modernist painter, mesmerizing photograms, prescient film narratives about consumerism and identity, and a willingness to fearlessly immerse himself in cultures and cities as different as Tokyo, Paris, Moscow and New York. Campany also suggests that part of Klein’s success in these different arenas came from a pronounced personal edge resulting from never really feeling at home in any of these environments combined with tremendous self-confidence. Klein thus found himself as an outsider able to work on the inside; always willing to press against cultural and visual boundaries.
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Measuring 10x13 inches and 384 pages, William Klein: Yes is incredibly seductive. The images are all beautifully rendered — full-bleed, varnished prints on a lustrous paper stock. Campany’s essay is only 20 pages, so the book is really about the pictures (as it should be). Each turn of the page is surprising, and it is clear these are still living images, just as pertinent (if not more so) now than when they were made. They exude presence, filling these frozen moments with feelings of eternal humanity. Klein is somehow able to orchestrate so much beauty out of dissonance and chaos, and yet each picture feels equally delightful and piercing.
William Klein: Yes prompted me to revisit that time in Paris more fully, and I again took a deep dive into the artist’s work. Broadway by Light feels just as compelling, full of the rich visual innovation I remember experiencing 20 years earlier. The photographs from Moscow, Paris and New York are full of the same courage, charisma and vitality. Mister Freedom remains the same bizarre, almost kitschy representation of ideas like those found in Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Just as importantly, William Klein: Yes thoroughly translates my experiences with all these pieces, somehow finding and articulating the core deep within Klein’s prodigious output.
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I find it interesting — and assume this is a quality Klein insisted upon, given that he was involved in all the publications — that if you look at his most recent publications, there is a remarkably consistent design or branding strategy to all of them. If you are unfamiliar with his publications from the last 20+ years, a quick Google search will show you the same plays with language, bold reds and rich blacks, playful use of fonts and page designs in all these books, a consistency that I not only admire, but I think helps accentuate the persistent, relentless visual acumen that defines William Klein.
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