William Klein famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work.
-- William Klein

#Photography #Being Yourself #Looks
I came from the outside, the rules of photography didn't interest me...
-- William Klein

#Photography #Interest
I don't roam around with a camera and never did. I took pictures in spurts, for my books, for some assignments or on special occasions. Like people who take out their cameras for Christmas and birthdays. Each time, like them, probably, I feel itâ€™s the first time and as if I would have to relearn the moves. Luckily, it comes pretty fast, like riding a bike.
-- William Klein

#Moving #Book #People
The New York book was a visual diary and it was also kind of personal newspaper. I wanted it to look like the news. I didnâ€™t relate to European photography. It was too poetic and anecdotal for meâ€¦ the kinetic quality of new york, the kids, dirt, madnessâ€”I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I would be grainy and contrasted and black. Id crop, blur, play with the negatives. I didnâ€™t see clean technique being right for New York. I could imagine my pictures lying in the gutter like the New York Daily News.
-- William Klein

#Photography #New York #Lying
What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life.
-- William Klein

#Photograph #Please
Sometimes, I'd take shots without aiming, just to see what happened. I'd rush into crowds - bang! bang! ... It must be close to what a fighter feels after jabbing and circling and getting hit, when suddenly there's an opening, and bang! Right on the button. It's a fantastic feeling.
-- William Klein

#Feelings #Buttons #Bangs
I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.
-- William Klein

#Photography #Cutting #Self
Anybody who pretends to be objective isn't realistic.
-- William Klein

#Realistic #Objectives
I have always done the opposite of what I was trained to do... Having little technical background, I became a photographer. Adopting a machine, I do my utmost to make it malfunction. For me, to make a photograph is to make an anti-photograph.
-- William Klein

#Opposites #Machines #Done
I have a special relationship with God. And when I take the right photograph, God gives me a little bing! in the camera. And then I know I'm on the right track.
-- William Klein

#Track #Giving #Special
I thought New York had it coming, that it needed a kick in the balls. When I returned to New York, I wanted to get even. Now I had a weapon, photography.
-- William Klein

#Photography #New York #Balls
I was a make believe ethnographer: treating New Yorkers like an explorer would treat Zulus - searching for the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography.
-- William Klein

#Photography #Zero #Believe

You may also like:

Alain Resnais
Film director
Andre Kertesz
Photographer
Chris Marker
Writer
Diane Arbus
Photographer
Elliott Erwitt
Photographer
Garry Winogrand
Photographer
Helen Levitt
Photographer
Helmut Newton
Photographer
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photographer
Irving Penn
Photographer
Joel Meyerowitz
Photographer
Josef Koudelka
Photographer
Lee Friedlander
Photographer
Richard Avedon
Photographer
Robert Doisneau
Photographer
Robert Frank
Photographer
Saul Leiter
Walker Evans
Photographer
Weegee
Photographer
William Eggleston
Photographer