Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
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 LÈeger. 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.
Based on the original images and dialogue of William Klein’s 1966 film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, this fantastic photo-novel tells the adventures of Polly Maggoo, a star model played by Dorothy McGowan (model for Vogue in the 1960s). The plot unfolds across the fashion world of Polly Maggoo; the world of television (based around the character of director Jean Rochefort); and a magical kingdom of operetta whose crown prince (played by Sami Frey) is in love with the young model. Also featuring in this star-studded cast are Alice Sapritch, Delphine Seyrig, Philippe Noiret, Roland Topor and Jacques Seiler. The publication ingeniously translates into book form the zany universe of the film. Klein’s masterful framing gives exquisite rhythm to its page composition and flow as we follow the crazy adventures of the extraordinary heroine in a madcap race through the streets and rooftops of Paris, all the way up to a distant palace lost in the snow. Born in New York, William Klein (1926–2022) was a multidisciplinary artist whose practice revolutionized photography, particularly fashion and street photography. His fashion work was the subject of several iconic photobooks, including Life Is Good and Good for You in New York (1957) and Tokyo (1964). In the 1980s, he turned to film projects. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
Here, looking back from the perspective of his 90 years, William Klein selects his favorite works, those that he considers to be the very best he has made over the course of his long career, in order to pay homage to the medium of photography itself. This book, appropriately titled Celebration, provides a tour of his most emblematic works, traversing New York, Rome, Moscow, Madrid and Paris, in powerful black and white or striking color.
The book also includes a text by the author in which he reflects upon the photographic art and explains what prompted him to make this director's cut, this exceptionally personal selection. A small-format but high-voltage volume, in page after page Celebration makes it clear why Klein’s achievement is one of the summits of contemporary photography.
Born in New York in 1928, William Klein studied painting and worked briefly as Fernand Léger’s assistant in Paris, but never received formal training in photography. His fashion work has been featured prominently in Vogue magazine, and has also been the subject of several iconic photo books, including Life Is Good and Good for You in New York (1957) and Tokyo (1964). In the 1980s, he turned to film projects and has produced many memorable documentary and feature films, such as Muhammed Ali, the Greatest (1969). Klein currently lives and works in Paris, France. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
Published by Errata Editions. Text by Max Kozloff, Jeffrey Ladd.
William Klein's Life is Good & Good for You in New York is regarded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking photo-books created in the last half-century. Published in 1956, its visual energy captured the rough-and-tumble streets of New York—a city Klein once described as “the world capital of anguish”—like no photo-book had done before or since. Robert Capa famously declared that if your photographs were no good it was because you were not close enough to your subject, and in Klein's New York people press themselves up against the lens, dance around it, pull faces, pretend to shoot each other—a visual chaos which is rigorously organized by Klein's “one American eye and one European eye,” as he once characterized his style. Books on Books 5 reproduces in its entirety Klein's brilliantly photographed and designed magnum opus.
Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
PUBLISHER Errata Editions
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 7 x 9.5 in. / 160 pgs / 110 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/28/2010 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2010 p. 36
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781935004080SDNR60 List Price: $39.95 CDN $53.95
Published by Aperture. Texts by Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ennio Flaiano, Federico Fellini.
In 1956, a 28-year old William Klein arrived in Rome, fresh from the debut of his now classic monograph Life Is Good & Good for You in New York, to assist Federico Fellini on his film Nights of Cabiria. Filming was delayed, and so Klein instead strolled about the city in the company of Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia and other avant-garde Italian writers and artists who served as his guides. It was on these walks that Rome, a pioneering and brilliant visual diary of the city, was born. First published in 1959, Klein's Rome features the quirky extended captions that distinguished his New York book, interspersed with observations about the city by Stendhal, Michelet, Mark Twain, Henry James and others. Today it is one of the most celebrated photography books of the twentieth century. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Rome's publication, Aperture (in close collaboration with Contrasto) has produced a revised edition, which includes previously unseen fashion pictures made in Rome and an updated text by the photographer. Redesigned to encompass two volumes in a special PVC slipcase, this new edition offers audiences another chance to celebrate one of the great photobooks. As Fellini said, "Rome is a movie, and Klein did it." After graduating from university, William Klein (born in New York, 1928) settled in Paris and became a painter. He returned to New York in 1954, and made a photographic logbook which was published two years later, and which won him world-wide acclaim: Life Is Good & Good for You in New York (Prix Nadar, 1956). Later, he produced books dedicated to Tokyo, Moscow and Paris. Painter, photographer, moviemaker and graphic designer, Klein currently lives in Paris.
PUBLISHER Aperture
BOOK FORMAT Slip, Hardcover, 2 vols, 10 x 13.75 in. / 224 pgs / 120 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 12/31/2009 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION Contact Publisher Catalog:
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781597111195TRADE List Price: $85.00 CDN $100.00
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. Photographs by William 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: Celebration
William Klein: Life is Good & Good for You in New York
William Klein: Rome
William Klein: Paris + Klein