He captured the energy of New York’s streets, revolutionised fashion photography, then made savage, censored films about the west. His scope, imagination and influence were simply immense
William Klein won his place in photographic history in 1956 when he published his first book, Life Is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels. Shot on the streets in his native city in 1954, and edited and designed by Klein, it was a high-octane vision that included deliberately blurred, distorted, and overexposed photographs plus a panoply of effects such as crops, bleeds, found ephemera, found typography, and tart captions stating “New York is a monument to the $. The $ is responsible for everything, good and bad, and it is the best thing the city has to offer.”
“My aesthetic was the New York Daily News,” wrote the photographer, who has died aged 96. “I saw the book I wanted to do as a tabloid gone berserk, gross, grainy, over-inked, with a brutal layout, bull-horn headlines. This is what New York deserved and would get.”
