Tips from William Klein

The. Denver, Colorado, 2015

Today, THE word on street photography…

If you haven’t heard of William Klein, the noted French-American street photographer, you surely have at least seen this, one of his most famous images:

Yep, thought so.

Eric Kim (yet another noted street photographer and blogger) has posted a great essay entitled, “Ten Lessons William Klein Has Taught Me About Street Photography“. I recommend you go there and read through Kim’s post in its entirety. Do this even if street photography isn’t your thing, as most of the lessons learned are applicable to photographic art in general.

At the end, there are three videos of William Klein (now in his late 80s and living in Paris), that are also worth your time. I would especially recommend the “Contact Sheets” video in which Klein himself narrates and talks about what makes “a  photograph” (meaning, a GOOD photograph). He walks you through the process of his many misses and the occasional hits that pop out of the contact sheet. It’s all about the fleeting nature of his kind of photography and how the eye must me active, tuned-in, and prepared.

The highlights of Klein’s philosophy? Get up close and personal, have an opinion, be purposeful about your work, don’t worry about the equipment or the technical aspects, don’t be afraid to be a nonconformist, and have fun…among other things.

Check Kim’s blog for the complete scoop, Buckwheat!

As to the back story of Klein’s famous image, “Boy with Gun”…If you look at his contact sheet of images taken just before and after this one, you’ll see that the gun is a toy and the kids are playing around with it, laughing and smiling. Klein said something like, “Look tough!” and that is what the kid came up with. The result is a very striking, very menacing, and scary image that reveals a lot more than we might like about us as humans and also us as Americans with our penchant for violence. “A photograph”, as Klein would say. (It would be interesting to hang this image right next to Diane Arbus’s image of “Child With Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park“!)