Top 35 William Klein Quotes

Being an expatriate doesn’t go down well in America.

I was making a film on Muhammad Ali in 1964, and I went to Miami to film everything around the fight for the world championship with Sonny Liston. I had the good luck of flying down to Miami, and there was one empty seat, and the guy sitting next to this empty seat was Malcolm X.

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.

My sister was brilliant: she was in the 25 top math students in the country. When she finished college, I said, ‘Spend a couple of months here in Europe. You’ll get another take on life.’ She never came – married some schmuck who made clothes for fat women on Seventh Avenue.

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.’

You do things for yourself, and you do things for other people, and you hope that these things coincide.

People didn’t object to me taking their photo. It was something everybody thought was their due: to be King for a Day, win the lottery and be photographed.

I think it’s obscene. I don’t know how you support the monarchy. How can you do that?

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’m known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In ‘Vogue,’ girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.

My complaint is that Americans drive me crazy, and the politics drive me crazy.

If a film is a real knockout like ‘Raging Bull,’ it does not matter that it might not have happened like that.

I like film. I’m old fashioned.

I thought it would be good not to hide the fact that you’re taking a photograph, and have people react and come in close and also make a commentary on what’s being photographed: ‘This is a photo, this is my point of view.’

My father was like Willy Loman, you know: he never really made it – and he was from a family where there were people who had made it.

The digital camera takes photographs in practically no light: it will dig out the least bit of light available. I was amazed to see the results of photographs that I wouldn’t take ordinarily. That’s the advantage of digital photography.

My way of living and working is that I’ll do my thing. I went from one thing to another. That annoyed people. They didn’t know how to categorize me.

I saw New York differently after being in Paris for a few years.

In fashion, you have assistants, flashes; you can make sets. There are people running around doing things for you. But I can take it or leave it.

When you use film, you use accidents, but there aren’t any accidents with digital photography. I don’t mind that it’s easy. But I do mind that there is a sort of consensus with the camera and the subject and the light, and you look at something, and you photograph it, and you get what you see.

The English are very exotic to me.

Why did I take fashion photographs? I thought it was fun. And there was a lot of money.

Fashion was more of a sideline for me. I did it for the money.

Don’t have rules, taboos, or limits.

I was 24 years old at the time. I had no real notion of what photography was about. I had no training. By accident, I put a negative in an enlarger, and you can do many things with that negative.

I like the streets. I grew up in the streets.

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 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.

What’s very funny is when you see amateurs filming something, they do some things no professionals would dare to do. They instinctively do things that are very avant-garde and useful.

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I used to think that most of these fashion creators weren’t that great, and if the photograph was good, it was mostly thanks to the photographer.

I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger.

I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder.

For my first book, ‘New York,’ I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera.

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.

Photography led me to experiment in graphic work and, actually, painting.