William Klein Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von William Klein:

I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country.

I wasn't part of any movement. I was working alone, following my instinct.

William Klein

I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up.

William Klein

I was a very clumsy Jewish kid.

William Klein

Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds.

William Klein

I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things.

William Klein

My father was convinced that America was the greatest place in the world. I'm afraid I didn't have the family I would have dreamed of.

William Klein

Memories. That's the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans.

William Klein

As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France.

William Klein

Most of the other soldiers were older than me and sent money back to their families, so they were more prudent.

William Klein

I was fascinated by the Black Panthers because I'd been in contact with the Nation of Islam, thanks to Muhammad Ali, and their way of talking was that the whites were the devil, and they'd get rid of them once they took over.

William Klein

My father was like Willy Loman, you know: he never really made it - and he was from a family where there were people who had made it.

William Klein

I like film. I'm old fashioned.

William Klein

I didn't really know who Cassius Clay was. I just wanted to show America through a heavyweight championship fight. Ever since my childhood, I'd been fascinated by the way the whole country becomes polarised around this event.

William Klein

If I didn't have to earn a living somehow, I would never have taken a fashion photograph in my life.

William Klein

I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country.

William Klein

I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.

William Klein

I saw New York differently after being in Paris for a few years.

William Klein

I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple.

William Klein

You do things for yourself, and you do things for other people, and you hope that these things coincide.

William Klein

I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn't matter to me.

William Klein

People didn't object to me taking their photo. It was something everybody thought was their due: to be King for a Day, win the lottery and be photographed.

William Klein

Being an expatriate doesn't go down well in America.

William Klein

I like festivals of all kinds: in 1969, I made a film about the first Pan-African festival in Algiers, which celebrated the countries that had been liberated 10 years earlier. There was a tremendous feeling of kinship.

William Klein

My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village.

William Klein

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 cropped, blurred, played with the negatives.

William Klein

My sister was brilliant: she was in the 25 top math students in the country. When she finished college, I said, 'Spend a couple of months here in Europe. You'll get another take on life.' She never came - married some schmuck who made clothes for fat women on Seventh Avenue.

William Klein

I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger.

William Klein

My way of living and working is that I'll do my thing. I went from one thing to another. That annoyed people. They didn't know how to categorize me.

William Klein

Photography led me to experiment in graphic work and, actually, painting.

William Klein

When I made 'Polly Maggoo,' it was more or less the end of this collaboration with 'Vogue' because I made a caricature of the editor-in-chief and the fashion people, so they didn't really adore me.

William Klein

I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero.

William Klein