William Klein Quotes

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

  William Klein

  Inspirational, Photography, Being Yourself

  65 Copy quote

• I came from the outside, the rules of photography didn't interest me.

  William Klein

  Photography, Interest

  16 Copy quote

• What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life.

  William Klein

  Please Me, Photograph, Please

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• Anybody who pretends to be objective isn't realistic.

  William Klein

  Realistic, Objectives

  William Klein, Walker Art Center (1989). “Cinema outsider: the films of William Klein : a nationally touring retrospective”

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• I feel like I'm doing something that's worthwhile. I feel like I'm showing something other people haven't shown. I don't get to talk to the people who I photograph, I just go, along, banging away. So I don't really have a relationship with them. A lot of people think it's very important. I don't. It's like love at first sight. I have an impression when I see somebody, and I have an idea of who they are, or what they are.

  William Klein

  Thinking, People, Love At First Sight

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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 didn’t relate to European photography. It was too poetic and anecdotal for me… the kinetic quality of new york, the kids, dirt, madness—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 didn’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

  7 Copy quote

• 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 it’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

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

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