William Klein Quotes Quotes

As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France.
Being an expatriate doesn't go down well in America.
Don't have rules, taboos, or limits.
Fashion had no interest for me. I would take photographs in the studio. I would go back home, and my wife would say, 'What is the fashion like for this season?' And I would say, 'I have no idea.'
Fashion was more of a sideline for me. I did it for the money.
For my first book, 'New York,' I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera.
French photography was basically poetic, and mine was vulgar and brash and violent, except that there's never any violence in the photographs: it's only in the photographic style.
I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder.
I always dreamt of becoming an artist in Paris. Thanks to the Army, it happened.
I always thought I was going to be an artist. I used to draw, and I would read Russian novels until 3 or 4 in the morning.
I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero.
I didn't really know who Cassius Clay was. I just wanted to show America through a heavyweight championship fight. Ever since my childhood, I'd been fascinated by the way the whole country becomes polarised around this event.
I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger.
I find it satisfying that what I've done in photography has had so much influence in how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things.
I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country.
I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple.
I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things.
I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn't matter to me.
I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor.
I like festivals of all kinds: in 1969, I made a film about the first Pan-African festival in Algiers, which celebrated the countries that had been liberated 10 years earlier. There was a tremendous feeling of kinship.
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AuthorName
William Klein
Profession
Photographer
BirthDate
19 April, 1928
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