It was fascinating for me to see William Klein’s way of combining satire and honesty. Two attributes that seem not to fit together yet make him and his work so intriguing. This balance was reflected both in his character and in his photography. As he said himself, his photographs of New York depict reality, while there is a kind of light-heartedness in it – like the laughter when facing hardship. He instantly connected with people and was very interested in discovering what was underneath the surface, while he neither took himself nor others too seriously. His ironic take and attitude are very present in all of his pictures, since they are so “close” that it seems like he himself is a part of them. His photographs are very energetic and authentic – it is not his style to glorify New York or America.
While his pictures do a great job in depicting reality, they are – at the same time – posed and only show one angle of the whole story. He points this out himself in a series of pictures onto which he painted:
In the famous photograph in the middle, the two boys with the gun seem very threatening, but the crossed out picture underneath shows them laughing and uncovers that they are just posing in the first one. Hence the process of the photographer to chose one picture over the other to publish makes a big difference in what other people see and what occurs to them as the whole reality.
I also really liked his short film “Broadway by Light” which shows consumerism and selling. As he explains, the movie “continue[s his] diatribe against America but in candy-colored heaven”. I thought it was very interesting that he said that the Times Square was “gemütlich” – which stood out to me since it is a German word – when he shot this movie. “Gemütlich” means cozy or homey – attributes that I can’t connect with my image of Times Square at all since I experienced this place as impersonal and rushed. This shows again how William Klein combines satire, intimacy and reality in his work.
4.341 INTRO TO PHOTOGRAPHY AND RELATED MEDIA 