The big interest to me about William Klein is the fact that he was not interested in fashion or photography when he first started involving himself in the medium and that to me gave him loads of advantages, he provided a fresh view of what could be done with a camera and therefore he broke the conventional rules of photography at the time. This gave Klein an edge over other photographers because he was deviant from the straight thinkers in photography, his photographs gave a pure vision because he didn't considering the photographic rules he was breaking.
"Thirty years ago I came to photography from the outside, so the rules of photography didn't interest me. I thought you could do anything in photography"
Personally i think this is one of the best ways to become noticed in any medium, if you don't know what rules exist then you just shoot what you think is right and it becomes completely personal, further more controversial to all of the other artists and photographers out there that lived by some of the rules within their strategy. Its hard in this day and age because you learn a lot of the rules as you go, the internet and other forms of networking are constantly influencing me the more I delve into my interest of photography, people leave comments on upload sites and you take their advice where as in Klein's day I imagine he was pretty much left alone to his own devices influenced mainly by his love for painting and art.
"I came from painting, at a time when people were saying that painting and painting rules were dead. I thought the same thing could apply to photography"
Painting itself is always very personal to the artist, its a hands on way of becoming creative and expressing yourself and I think thats Klein work projects a lot of his own personality and influences. To me his photos show forms of modern art, simplistic, organic and visually stimulating.
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Mondrian's work came before Klein and so maybe he was influenced by this painting when a painter himself and this translated through to his photographic work, but even if he wasn't it seems to me that both had similar ideals but were just channelling these through different mediums.
Mondrian: "This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour"
Klein's fashion photographs show aesthetic relations to "De stijl" (neoplasticism), The hard defined lines of black and white are clear but its how his photographs turn his models into an abstract form within the frame, the clothes are more in tune with the aesthetic than the models themselves and this not only depersonalises them but makes them take a back seat, behind all of the bold simplicity that really catches the eye.
This is a perfect example of using raw street to create a surreal out of this world feeling by bringing in fashion clothing that plays off its surroundings and highlights the location and clothing far more than the people within the frame. Usually when people view a photograph or a painting their eyes inadvertently dot around the people captured within because thats who they will relate to most strongly being a person themselves they can then judge what is happening within the scene and how they should feel about it. This form of photography distances the audience from that, much like Brechtian devices within a play it forces you to look, think and interpret as opposed to just accepting what you see.
