Veteran fashion photographer William Klein was a particularly strong presence and influence in Barneys New York’s stunning new “Backstage” advertising campaign. Often credited with pioneering the concept of the backstage fashion photo, Klein continues to breath new life into the genre.
Below, Klein talks with us about his early years as a painter, how fashion shows resemble riot scenes, and more.
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Barneys New York: You’ve gained international renown as a photographer, yet you started your artistic career as a painter, studying with the great Fernand Leger. What compelled you to switch mediums?
William Klein: I didn’t “switch” mediums but rather added one. Painting wasn’t enough. My painting in the early 1950s was abstract and geometric, hard-edged. When I discovered what I could do with photography and how I was able to comment on life around me, which had no place in my painting, I felt I could add this in my work. I was influenced by the work of revolutionary Russians like Rodchenko, the constructivists, and the Bauhaus. I became a multi-discipline artist: painting, designing, photographing, and filmmaking.
BNY: You’ve been credited with pioneering the backstage shot. Tell us about your earliest work in this context.
WK: In the 1980s, I had a comission from the Ministry of Culture [in France] to do a film about the new fashion “creators.” I had stopped taking fashion photos years before and thought that photographing backstage collections would be a good way of getting back in touch. At the time, there was no one photographing backstage. Today, there’s an army of photographers and videographers backstage.
For me, backstage was like a riot or a war scene – with things happening all around me — and for the first time I treated fashion photos like reportage, without the obligation to show the clothes like for a fashion sitting. It was a new situation — freer and exciting. Much action without bullets flying. Everyone was at liberty: the girls, the designers, myself.
- “Blonde and Hood” by William Klein, taken backstage at Alaia, Paris, 1985
BNY: What was the reaction to your first backstage images?
WK: In the 1980s, the newspaper Libération asked me to show the collections of the year, and I chose to use backstage photos. I don’t know how the designers reacted, but I do know that, since that publication, backstage photography has become an essential part of the collections, a ritual. For me, it provided an excitement very different from classic Fashion photography, which, however, I relished for the possibility of staging and exploring new techniques.
BNY: Backstage photography — which is essentially photojournalism within a fashion context — is supposed to depict an honesty that staged photos cannot. But can a photograph ever be truly devoid of artifice?
WK: No. A camera is not a mirror. Taking a photograph means making a technical decision. Which lens, what exposure. A wide angle lens, which I use, gives a special vision to the scene photographed, a longer exposure gives blur, a flash gives a curtain harshness, combining a flash with a long exposure (open flash) gives blur plus brilliance. Each decision that a photographer makes can be called an artifice.
- Interviewed by Lesley M. M. Blume
With special thanks to Lina Kutsovskaya
Header image: archival photo of William Klein, used with permission of the photographer.
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