William Klein, photographer who captured the vibrancy and chaos of New York streets and brought the same energy into his fashion work – obituary
msn.comRichard Avedon at Harper’s Bazaar, someone who would bring what he called “the grit of life” to his pages. Liberman took Klein back to Manhattan and made him one of their star photographers.
Klein set himself apart from the fashion pack with his abrasive, grainy work; he had, recalled Liberman, “a brashness and a sort of violence that I admired. ” Liberman did, though, advise Klein to temper his wild spirit with a dose of market realism, telling him: “You have to realise that women who subscribe to Vogue have pink bathrooms. ”Klein had agreed to go back to New York on the understanding that Vogue would support his personal projects, and he decided to make a photo-diary of the city chronicling the changes since he had last been there.
The resulting book, Life is Good and Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956), was rejected by American publishers, and even by Vogue, and was published in France.
It was, wrote the Telegraph, “a tantrum of finger-poking photography. . . any sense of introspection jettisoned in the hunt for style and excitement” – but it also recorded his enduring fascination with his home town.
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