The Many Lives of William Klein imagine...

This programme contains some strong language.

This is William Klein.

A man who's spent his life refusing to be pigeonholed.

I have film, I'm ready to go.

He's a pioneer of 20th-century photography.

His raw, dramatic images

of '50s New York helped create

the art of street photography.

His pictures are like a fist in the face, coming straight at you.

You are not going to miss them.

This one book has probably been the most influential

photographic book ever published.

And these are his striking and hugely influential fashion images.

He's made countless films,

including the first ever documentary about Muhammad Ali...

I predict that tonight, somebody will die at ringside from shock.

..controversial political films,

and his classic satire of the fashion world,

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?

Divine.

It's hard to believe that that same person is capable

of such beauty, at the same time be so powerful, and angry.

Today, at the age of 84, Klein still displays an enviable lust for life.

I'm a New Yorker. I was able to bullshit all these guys.

I can still do it.

And now, an acclaimed retrospective at Tate Modern

is celebrating Klein's dazzling range of work

over a career of more than 60 years.

In the months leading up to the exhibition,

I caught up with William Klein

back on the streets of his native New York,

and in his home city of Paris,

to try to understand his unique creative vision

through the eyes of the man himself.

Wide-angle lens?

I'm going to look great.

William Klein is one of the great Americans in Paris.

After the war, he did his army service in Europe,

and moved to France,

where he fell madly in love with Janine,

who would be by his side for over 50 years.

Throughout his life,

he has worked regularly on both sides of the Atlantic.

But Paris is home.

After Janine died seven years ago, he has lived here, alone,

in a grand top-floor apartment.

What's that you've got? Is that your team?

This is the Yankees.

I was against the Yankees in the old days,

now I am sort of...mellowing.

What do you miss about New York?

The great restaurants.

I'm kidding!

-I was going to say!

-I don't give a shit about New York restaurants.

Thanks to a US Government scholarship for ex-soldiers,

William was able to study in Paris as an artist.

Paris was the centre of art in the world.

I thought, you know, after the war, I would have a few bucks

and I would be able to live like a king in Paris.

Go to La Coupole and clap Picasso and Giacometti on the shoulder.

I thought that was the life.

Klein studied under the legendary French sculptor and painter, Fernand Leger.

He was imposing. He was like

Rocky Marciano or Lee Marvin.

He was a big, husky, Normandy peasant.

He spoke in very simple terms.

He said all you 20-year-old apprentice geniuses,

you want to be well known,

you want to get galleries,

you want to meet collectors,

you want to make money,

and bullshit.

Leger was one of the great pioneers of modern art.

His work explored aspects of Cubism and futurism,

and also included extraordinary experimental films.

His ambitious multidisciplinary approach to art

provided a vital inspiration to the young Klein.

To go to Leger and to see a real 100% artist,

a great innovator and theoretician, was great.

The early work that Klein produced was full of bold lines,

rich colours, and a strong graphic eye

that would appear throughout his work.

-OK.

-So we're going to the studio?

-Did you go to the Folies Bergere last night?

-I wish.

Today is...what? Thursday, Friday?

It is Friday. Is it open on Friday?

They have a special Friday show.

In the Montparnasse district of Paris,

William still pays regular visits

to the studio he has been using for over 50 years.

Here, everything is carefully curated

with Klein's trademark red and black branding.

Here, we need more density.

The exhibition at Tate Modern is a few months away,

and William's assistant, Pierre-Louis,

is overseeing the preparations.

Something very light.

For William Klein, an exhibition is never just a retrospective,

but a spectacle,

with his images often printed on a grand scale.

C'est bien.

'Among the work at Tate Modern will be

'some of his early experiments with light and photography.'

You're very prescriptive about how your shows are done,

how the exhibitions are mounted, so what was your concept for the Tate?

-What was my hope and vision?

-Yes.

A good show.

Bravo, Pierre-Louis.

Will you be doing that at the Tate, Pierre-Louis?

Is it performance art, this?

No, Pierre-Louis only does this in Paris.

Let the Tate manage for themselves.

It's these abstract images that first brought William

to the attention of Vogue magazine.

After he produced a series of works based on painted panels

that he'd made for an Italian architect.

I photographed the panels,

and the light wasn't very good, so the exposure was long,

and I had Jan, my wife, turn panels while I photographed,

and I saw these geometrical forms which blurred,

and I thought, well, maybe this is something new.

And I had the idea that if I had a negative,

I could do anything with it.

The renowned art director of Vogue, Alexander Liberman,

was struck by Klein's visual imagination

and invited him to work for the magazine.

So, he gave me a contract. It wasn't a lot of money,

but it was like 100 a week.

-Which, at that time was...

-Good money!

-..really good money.

So, despite his love of Paris, in 1954,

with the financial support of Vogue magazine,

he found himself back in New York.

Here, he created a groundbreaking visual portrait of the city,

unlike anything that had gone before.

A book of photographs that was not simply a collection of images,

but more like a movie experience, with the pictures accompanied

by Klein's own wry commentary.

'New York is a monument to the dollar.

'The dollar is responsible for everything, good and bad.

'Everybody comes for it. No one can resist it.'

What Klein did

in the mid-'50s was to take the language

of things like tabloid newspapers,

that very grainy, black-and-white, direct way of looking at the world.

I think coming back, he really smelled the energy of New York

and wanted to translate that through these very grainy, black and white,

almost stream of consciousness images.

He had this eye that was kind of fearless.

His pictures were raw, rugged, they were in your face.

He seemed to have the courage to go forward rather than step backwards.

'Klein's New York book, first published in the 1950s,

'is now one of the most collectable of all photography books.'

I've never seen the original of this book,

I've only seen a version of it.

'It came with an ironic subtitle,

'"Life is good and good for you in New York",

'and a playful, unconventional layout.'

So, here is a photograph that was taken on St Patrick's Day.

All these guys are Irish.

A lot of the people in my photographs

either look at me, or there is always somebody to the side

who is looking at the group and saying,

"What is this guy photographing?"

It wasn't usual at that time. This is 1955, '54.

It was kind of surprising

for a lot of people to see me photographing them, you know.

'The book takes the reader on a very personal journey

'around the neighbourhoods of '50s New York.'

'Some 10,000 flourish in the several streets of Chinatown.

'About 80% are bachelors. The average age, 51.

'Many still have wives and children in China.

'The Italian preteen club present baseball player card collection.

'My old neighbourhood.

'The stick ball team with girl cleanup hitter captain, rare.'

This is a composed photograph. This is in Little Italy.

The dwarf was the mascot,

and these guys played with the dwarf.

And the dwarf was there. They were proud to show me their mascot.

He was proud to be their mascot.

I thought it was very unsavoury and...insulting,

but they didn't.

'To understand Klein's fascination with the streets he photographed,

'I went with William back to the neighbourhood where he grew up.'

How much affection do you have for New York?

I'm wondering, do I have an affection for New York?

I tolerate New York.

You tolerate New York. You love Paris?

I love Paris.

Let's go to the corner of 108th and Amsterdam.

That's the house where you lived.

That's the house I lived, and I'm pretty sure there's no plaque!

William Klein was born in 1928

to a Jewish immigrant family,

rocked by the impact of the great Stock Market Crash.

My grandfather was a tailor,

and he was successful.

And then my father, who took it over, played the stock market in 1929,

which wasn't a good time to play the stock market.

And he lost everything.

We had to move, and we were in a real dump on the West Side.

The family were forced to move to a tough neighbourhood,

not far from Harlem.

The good life and the crappy life were very often juxtaposed.

There was a film that came out when I was in New York at that time,

called the Dead End Kids,

and in this film, you'd see an upscale apartment house

and right next to it was a slum.

It was a matter of life and death to walk five blocks.

A real New York situation.

Out of sight!

I was brought up on the streets, part of a New York underclass.

Here we are. OK, thank you.

A pilgrimage.

201.

That's it.

Look at the door. The door is very chic.

And the buttons.

I just rang number one.

My friend William... Oh, thank you. ..Used to live here,

-so we're trying to... He lived here...

-OK.

-..many, many years ago.

-What apartment?

-The first one, here.

KNOCKS REPEATEDLY

-It's kind of a...

-It's a knock, all right.

People inside, they hear that, they think it's the police

or the Mafia!

'There's no-one home, but it doesn't seem to bother him too much.

'I can see that William is a man always living in the moment.'

-You go to school?

-Yes.

-Down the block?

'Take him back to the place he was brought up

-'and there's no great nostalgia.'

-Can I ask you a question?

'He's more curious about the people living here now.'

Are there still cockroaches around?

I saw one, maybe last week, but I have a cat, so he took care of it.

-Were you born here?

-Yes.

-In this house?

-Yes.

My grandmother's been here for 40-something years.

And you like this neighbourhood?

It's home to me, it's all I know.

When Klein's family lived here, this was a poor community,

hit hard by the Depression.

Tell me about your father.

So, when you came here, your father was sort of coming downmarket,

-then...?

-He was moving down the ladder.

HE CHUCKLES

I guess I felt it was going down the scale

of success in America.

And...

I was not too excited.

During this period, in his early teens,

William was already captivated by art,

trekking across town to visit the Museum of Modern Art.

What made a boy of 13, 14 make his way to the Museum of Modern Art?

Uh, you know, must be in my genes somewhere.

Uh, I guess...

there was also an element of wanting to get out of

a shitty place like this.

NEWSREEL: 'No dusty storehouse for old Masters,

'this museum is an up-to-date showroom for the art of our time.

'Painting and sculpture, architecture and still photography

'and the motion picture.'

Art seemed to be, for me, a way of...

moving out, moving up.

Listen, let's get out of this fucking place!

Did you like my old house?

-I liked the congeniality of the company we met there.

-Yeah.

It was a real kind of community. Was it like that when you were there?

No!

We're going up to Harlem.

Harlem was one of the neighbourhoods that featured

prominently in the New York book.

When you went there with the camera,

did that give you a kind of excuse to be looking, do you think?

The camera was an excuse, yes.

'Horsing around in Harlem.

'"Man, what do you want to take our picture for?"

'Trying to escape the lens, but playful, a game.'

A lot of people would say, "Are you crazy, going up to Harlem?"

People that I would be more or less afraid of looking at directly,

I felt at ease taking their photographs.

'The Whites never go to Harlem, never even think of it,

'for Harlem lies off-limits, somewhere in the bad conscience of the city.

'New York time missed a beat here.

'Since the Whites left Harlem, the clocks stopped.'

GIRLS CHATTER

Despite the fact that he has some difficulty moving these days,

William's eager to meet and talk to people on the street.

With the help of our driver, John, we went to talk to the locals.

I can only guess what he'd have been like in his prime,

-prowling the streets of New York.

-Does he know what you know?

No, I know SOME of what he knows...

You were what, photographing in Harlem how many years ago?

-Many years ago.

-Many years ago?

-How many years? The '60s?

-The '50s?

-'50s.

-Oh, yeah?

-Who were the subjects you were photographing?

-Just people.

-Just people. Oh, all right.

-I photographed the kids.

'Close close-up.

'You could go into an empty Latin Harlem then,

'tell the kids, "Move closer, hold it, look here, play the harmonica."

'You could do that then.'

It was a real community, everybody looked out for one another.

-Here, in Harlem?

-Yes, everybody looked out for one another. You know?

See, a lot of Caucasians, they were afraid to come to Harlem.

-Yeah.

-All the movie stars, politicians,

-they used to come uptown to see our shows.

-And you guys couldn't get in.

Yeah. We used to go in the back. We had to go in the back.

THEY CHUCKLE

Yeah.

William still carries his camera with him everywhere

and today is no exception.

-You've still got a good eye, William.

-Yes.

-You have a good eye.

-That's easy, man.

That's what made you a good photographer.

-Cos you've got a good eye!

-A good eye.

-Yes.

You need more than that.

The thing with Klein's New York is you start looking through,

and it's the accumulation of these pictures which really counts,

so by the end of it, you haven't just seen a collection of individual pictures,

you've seen an accumulation, which creates this noise, which gives off energy,

which reflects so accurately

what was going on in New York in the mid-1950s.

'Pseudo-poster for the American dream.

'Italian cop, integrated Hispanic,

'Yiddish momma,

'African-American lady, plus beret.

'The melting pot.'

Klein wasn't the only pioneering street photographer,

but his harshly-framed, often blurred and distorted pictures

had a look that was entirely his own.

Another famous photograph, which...was used a lot.

These kids were just play-acting and they weren't...

Threatening.

..as tough as they look.

I asked them to look tough and for me, it's a self-portrait, you know?

I also played on the street with guns,

but I was also a sort of angelic...

So I was both of them.

You know you're not supposed to smoke on the BBC, William.

You're not used to doing what you're told, are you?

'These contrasting sides to Klein's personality -

'the straight-talking street kid and the sensitive artist -

'are a key to understanding the richness of his work.'

This has been gruelling.

'I sense that rawness'

in his make up.

I know for a fact he doesn't suffer fools gladly,

that you mustn't upset him, so,

there is an emotional quickness and rawness about him as a person.

And it definitely comes across in his photography.

'Get your camera out of my face. Unusual, but OK.'

Klein developed a language which was, at the time, incredibly radical

and unique.

Now we see it all the time, and in fact, every time we DO see it,

they are, in fact, children of Klein.

His distinctive style has influenced generations of photographers around the world,

including the leading Japanese photographer, Daido Moriyama,

whose work is being shown alongside Klein's at Tate Modern.

And for one legendary British photographer,

Klein's example was an inspiration.

It was completely in-your-face, the way he worked.

And that's what attracted, you know, him to me.

I thought, "This is the kind of man I would like to be,

"this is the way my photography has to be - no half-measures, straight in."

You look at Klein's work and you believe you're looking at reality.

There's a strong sense of composition,

but then real-life and randomness

is allowed to come in and out of the frame.

'Cashier in Broadway Cinema.

'At home in her glass case on the sidewalk, she reads, dreams,

'phones, makes up, completely oblivious of the sidewalk audience.'

As well as enigmatic moments

fleetingly captured by Klein's camera, the book is full of scenes

where the subjects are clearly very aware of what's going on.

I think some of his best pictures

are a mix, where you get

a kind of gallery of characters in the shot.

And some of them are clearly aware of what's going on

and are playing up to the camera.

And you feel this very collaborative theatre in the pictures.

-John?

-Yes? I'm getting my hair cut.

You're getting your hair shaved.

-That's not a haircut, that's a shave, man.

-I'm getting my hair shaved.

Ah, you're a good man, William.

The gods are with you.

Why are you walking around with film? You got to get with the times!

I like film. I'm old-fashioned.

-William may seem old-fashioned in today's digital age...

-I have film.

I'm ready to go.

.. but when he began taking pictures,

they were a radical departure from the work of many

of his contemporaries, including the fabled Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Cartier-Bresson kept this distance, almost as if he was a ghost,

walking amongst the people of the streets of the world, you know?

Whereas Klein make no pretence that he was there

and he was coming after you with that camera.

John?

-Yes?

-Sing us some Placido Domingo.

HE SINGS

The irony was, William took his pictures using a camera

he'd bought from Cartier-Bresson.

It shows so ably and so well

how photography can be so different with a different author

and different photographer behind the camera.

-Excuse me, what's your name?

-Ramona.

-Ramona, are you going to cut my hair a little bit?

-Yes, I do now.

-OK.

Klein's New York images were obsessed not only with the people,

but with how New York was a city constantly selling itself.

This was the age of Mad Men, the birth of advertising

and Klein's images brought a satirical eye

to a city in which people were drowning in the big sell.

'Advertising today is mainly grotesque.

'Such a conspiracy has developed between advertiser and public

'that it's become a gag. The public is grateful, yaks, then goes along.'

Vogue never printed his photographs.

In fact, he couldn't find a publisher at all in America

for his unfashionably gritty pictures.

William, by then back in Paris, just thought they'd missed the point.

IN FRENCH

-John, do you know where we're going?

-Yes.

-Good.

Look at this. What's going on?

When he was starting, Klein was one of a small group of pioneers,

documenting the streets around them.

-Is this Times Square?

-Yeah.

Now, the urge to capture everything with a camera

is a mainstream obsession.

-Everyone's got a camera now, you know?

-Everybody, that's the thing.

What's amazing is that all these people buy a camera

and start using it and what they do are the most avant-garde things

that no professional cameraman would dare to do.

In 1958,

still experimenting with new ways of documenting New York,

William picked up a film camera and came here to Times Square,

where, over a period of nights, he shot a remarkable short film -

Broadway By Light.

His mesmerising, beautifully-scored meditation on a city

enthralled to the consumer image is regarded by many

as an early Pop Art classic.

When I did Broadway By Light,

I had a tripod and a small Arriflex.

The people who came by and saw me filming it...

at, you know, 11 o'clock at night, in the freezing cold,

they would look at the camera and tripod and...

"Hey, man, you got a great camera, man."

But they never asked me what I was filming or why.

I got visitors from the FBI who came by and said,

"We want you to make a film that glorifies America."

-I said, "OK."

-Really?

-No.

I did it a bit in that spirit.

A lot of people said, you're doing a book

so dark and black and anti-American.

I said, I'll do something which will be beautiful,

in colour, which would also talk about

consumerism...and selling.

It was a conscious effort to continue my diatribe

against America but in candy-coloured heaven.

You call it a diatribe but there's something playful about

what you do as well.

It's a hymn to America, it's a hymn to money,

a hymn to commerce.

It's a hymn to the most beautiful thing in New York.

What was it like when you came here all those years ago?

When you put your tripod up, where did you put it?

When I did this film? Right here.

It was like a living room.

All the walls were covered.

And, er...

It was intimate and gemutlich.

Comfortable. Gemutlich.

Yeah, really.

This is the interesting thing about Klein's vision of New York.

There's a warmth but also an edge, which seems to capture the city,

its people and the one thing they've always had in common.

Everybody in New York thinks they're special.

They all thought they were entitled to be famous.

They thought they deserved to be photographed.

They were all complicit in those pictures that you took.

-They were.

-They wanted to be part of it.

They wanted to pose for you.

Klein's portrait of a city has attitude and energy,

fuelled, as always, by his mischievous sense of humour.

-You took a picture with that?

-Yeah.

-Let's have a look.

That's quite fun.

It's all right.

Throughout this period, William was still being paid by Vogue magazine.

It wasn't long before he was persuaded

to take fashion photographs,

bringing the same invention and originality

that his Vogue mentor, Alex Lieberman, had first spotted

in his early work.

Alex Lieberman

was always looking for the kind of energy

and the kind of immediacy of a news photograph,

which was one reason that I think

that Bill's photography appealed to him so much.

It was because it had that sense of action.

What's exceptional about William's work is that

every single image is so powerful.

He's not satisfied with the ordinary.

He's only interested in the extraordinary.

Where Klein's New York photos had been in your face,

many of his fashion images adopted new techniques,

experimenting with tele-photo lenses,

mirrors and some of the dark room trickery he'd learnt

in his youthful Paris days.

But he had not lost his passion for the street

and for all the drama and confrontations it offered.

Bill was more interested in photography

than in fashion.

He was not the only photographer who did photos out of doors.

But Bill was the only one who put the girls in amazing situations,

like standing around in the middle of the traffic

or climbing on statues or in and out of fountains.

The more difficult the situation,

the better he liked it.

At the Tate exhibition,

one of Klein's most iconic fashion images

is now taking pride of place.

-Here we are.

-Here we are.

-In Rome.

-Piazza da Spagna.

I was doing a story for Vogue

on the fashion collections in Rome.

And I was shown

these two dresses.

I said, "I know what we'll do.

We'll do it on the pedestrian crossing at Piazza da Spagna.

I had these girls walking back and forth,

doing doubletakes because they had more or less the same dress.

I was up on the steps of the Piazza da Spagna.

I was experimenting...

You were on a tele-photo?

A tele-photo. You see everything is flattened out.

They couldn't see you so they didn't know what was going on.

Nobody could see me. I was half way up the steps.

These men didn't understand.

They thought they were hookers.

They walked up, starting feeling their ass.

The editor from Vogue started panicking and she said,

"We're going to create a scandal."

So we had to stop.

I was on the sidewalk,

biting my nails, terrified that the police would turn up

cos traffic was beginning to slow,

men were beginning to congregate.

The whole thing was getting a little fraught.

Bill was laughing his head off.

That was typical of how we worked on location.

I like these situations where things just developed.

Did this picture cause quite a sensation when it came out?

All the photographic stores were besieged by photographers,

buying tele-photo lenses for their fashion shoots.

I think it's a good idea. Still think it's a good idea.

While his New York images feel like a real portrait of the city...

..his fashion images constantly play with the idea of reality,

drawing attention to their artifice.

I'm not so sure William actually likes fashion.

He always says to me he can take it or leave it.

He says that the difference is when he's working on reportage,

he's capturing a moment in time that he can't control.

He gets very excited by that.

But when he's working in fashion, it tends to be

he has assistants, there are sets, it's about imagery

and creating a more playful idea.

Because he understood how to create a powerful picture,

he created a lot of iconic fashion pictures.

Great photographers like Avidon, Penn, Klein,

they establish their ideas and then the fashion world comes along

and uses them and that's fine.

You reap the reward of being well-paid.

It means your work can go more mainstream.

William is still in touch with some of his models.

In New York, he caught up and reminisced

with one of his favourites, Dorothy MacGowan.

-This is Dorothy again.

-I'm standing on a platform.

I fell down.

Did he care?

I think he felt like a jerk.

I was very angry. I had to go to the doctor.

He got so involved in his work,

he forgot that I was real.

DOROTHY LAUGHS

Dorothy was one of the supermodels of her day.

But Klein's energetic, spontaneous style

was a world away from what she had been used to.

With Bill...it was crazy!

We had a lot of fun. We laughed. Nobody came near us.

They just stayed away.

There were no rules, at least as far as HE was concerned.

That's a little shocking to some people.

Tough!

How was the background created?

I would take a flash and I had an assistant with lights,

he would go around the silhouette,

put it over her head and do this.

It looks like a Japanese ideogram.

I love that. Sometimes, we had the flash ourselves

and we created our own, like here.

-She didn't know.

-You're so full of baloney!

Here I created my own flash.

I'm almost sure.

All you did was hold out your hand for this big cheque.

A big cheque? Are you kidding? From Vogue?!

THEY LAUGH

-Think again!

-She was very funny...

Seeing William and Dorothy together, you can tell

how the teasing quality of the pictures

is right there in his relationship with his models.

I never kissed any models.

I was the only one who never flirted with the models. True?

Well, I... No, that's not true.

-Practically.

-What do you mean that's not true?

First of all, you were much cuter than a lot of the photographers.

It was very clear that you

and Janine were very clearly a couple.

There was nowhere to go with you. You understand?

You were a man who was married and you were happily married.

We were.

In 1966, after nearly a decade taking fashion pictures,

William made his first feature film -

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? -

casting Dorothy as a young fashion model making her way

in the business in a parody of a celebrity-obsessed media.

What was it about the fashion world that intrigued you so much?

The film is not about fashion. It's about media.

Fashion is part of media.

It is also something that is pretty funny,

graphic and inventive.

I thought, "Let's do a film on fashion."

We were all pressed into service.

Bill was doing this film on a shoestring.

Jenny and his wife did the costumes.

The whole thing was done for fun.

My rate for Vogue was 75 a day!

-Yeah!

-My rate for Polly Maggoo was 6 a day!

6 a day?!

-Talk about...

-Top rate then.

-6 a day?

-6!

I can't believe that you got so much.

You're so full of baloney!

'Your shoes are dandy!'

It was supposed to be a spoof, a send-up but unfortunately

the editor-in-chief of American Vogue was not amused!

To many of those in the know, it was all too obvious

who had inspired the film's larger than life fashion editor.

Divine. Di-veen!

The fashion editor was based on Diana Vreeland

and her way of making pronouncements

like "shocking pink is the navy blue of India".

Or "think pink".

Did you intend that to be Diana Vreeland?

Oh, it was Diana Vreeland.

HE LAUGHS

No doubt about that, except that nobody

ever made fun of her.

While fashion was paying the bills, Klein's love of the street

remained undiminished.

Among the many striking images at the Tate exhibition

are pictures from Klein's critically-acclaimed books

on Moscow, Tokyo and Rome.

'In Rome, all seems pregnant with meaning.

'Men look tormented. They watch each other

'and they are watched by uniformed carabinieri.

'Via del Corso. Worried passer-by. What goes on? Nothing.'

Sometimes they look like film stills.

Sometimes the look like these snapped moments where a photographer

has taken a picture very quickly.

But they're all too well composed

to really be like that. They're all too taut, organised frames.

By the end of his travels,

Klein had turned street photography into a remarkable art form.

1961, Moscow.

May Day, Red Square.

Facing me, Lenin, Marx, Engels and a traditional parade.

In the foreground, several comrades from the KGB.

I think with his set of city books, Klein developed a language

that was, at the time, incredibly radical and unique.

And this has spawned many imitators

and it had a profound effect on the photography world.

The subtle detail in his pictures comes partly from intuition,

but also a smart, technical awareness

of how to get that something extra.

As he showed me, back at Tate Modern.

This girl is there in her bikini on the beach on the Moscow River

and that's probably her grandfather or father

and her mother in the background, and what's interesting is that

this is a wide-angle lens, so I would aim the camera at her,

and she thinks I'm obsessed with her, she's the centre of the world,

but she doesn't realise I see things happening behind her.

And we have a family portrait.

Yes, it's a family portrait.

Every photograph, I look at the contact,

it brings back memories of everything,

how I was feeling, tired, full of beans, photography is like that.

I'm a champ!

I'm the real champ!

With his talent for taking photographs

that looked like film stills,

Klein was keen to continue his own adventures in film.

And, as luck would have it, there was one man

he seemed born to collaborate with - Muhammad Ali.

BOTH: Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Ha!

His 1964 film, Cassius The Great, takes us

incredibly close to the young superstar in the making

and includes the memorable and often replayed encounter

of Ali and the Beatles.

But it was a typical mix of luck and charm

that gave William such privileged access.

I went down from New York to Miami

and there was an empty seat on the plane

and I recognised the guy sitting next to this empty seat, Malcolm X.

And I said, "Is this seat free?" He said, yeah.

And I sat down next to him. And we hit it off.

Malcolm X was a very cool, intelligent guy.

And he was curious about a Jewish film-maker from New York.

And he said, "I'll give you a hand."

And he let the word out that I was OK.

And I went to Clay's camp.

And immediately I was accepted.

Jabbing and left-hooking. Jabbing and left-hooking.

Yeah, I'm a pretty fighter. I'm pretty smooth. I'm something new.

Klein's documentary about Ali is an almost forgotten classic.

It doesn't just portray the boxing legend

right at the start of his career.

It explores what the story had to say about

the racial tensions of the time.

In one scene, he brilliantly choreographs the wealthy white men

who control the young fighter, as they introduce themselves to camera.

I am W Land Brown,

chairman of the board of Brown-Forman Distillers Corporation.

I'm also a farmer and in the oil business.

Warwick Bingham, the assistant publisher of the Courier, Journal

and Louisville Times.

I'm William Cuttings,

president of the Brown Williamson Tobacco Corporation.

I travel the world!

To travel the world, you should be pretty, like me.

He found in Ali a perfect alter ego, you know.

Here's a guy that wants to do it his way.

Pugnacious, determined, super articulate, super smart,

so, Klein behind the camera is a perfect foil to Ali

the performer, in front of the camera.

-People saying we crazy.

-Let 'em keep thinking it!

-They say we're crazy.

-Let 'em keep thinking it.

-They say we're crazy.

-We are crazy! Ha!

THEY LAUGH

Unsurprisingly, Ali relished what he saw.

He said, "Where's my film?" I said, "I brought it."

And we went to his room, and he had steaks brought up, and ice cream.

When the film was over he wanted to see it again, and we saw it three times.

INDISTINCT CHANTING AND SHOUTING

Throughout the 1960s, Klein became increasingly politicised.

Camera in hand, he documented the revolution on his doorstep.

Dit qu'on juge pas les hommes par rapport a leurs origines

sociaux, sociales.

Filming the frenzy of debate

and argument in Paris during the student occupations of 1968.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

But, as always, it was unmistakably Klein's eye on events.

The French filmmaker Chris Marker said of Klein's films that

you could pick any frame, and it would look like one of his photos.

You could see what he meant.

CHANTING

Elsewhere, Klein turned his camera on the Black Panthers,

advocates of violent revolution.

The rules are directed

in what the pigs of the mass media report, you know?

Showing his usual fearlessness,

Klein gave a voice to their controversial leader

Eldridge Cleaver, on the run in Algeria from the FBI.

These pigs tried to kill me, shot me in my leg,

and they were going to kill me, and the only reason I'm not dead

this minute, there were too many people who came out

of their houses, and started screaming at these pigs to stop.

But Klein's provocative political mischief-making

caught up with him in the end.

His contribution to the anti-war film, Far From Vietnam,

would have serious repercussions for his career.

I knew that there was going to be the biggest anti-war rally ever

in America, and I went to New York for that.

It was really worth it.

Because, for and against,

the hysterical pro-war people screaming, "Bomb Hanoi, bomb Hanoi!"

It's kids like this are getting burned up by napalm,

kids like this, and what's more, people like you,

grown-up people, being burned up for no good reason at all.

Stop!

Meanwhile, William was still taking fashion photos.

And Far From Vietnam didn't go down well with his Vogue paymasters.

Napalm! Nah! Nah!

Nah!

They said, now you're doing movies, you don't really need our contract.

My contract was,

I lived on that contract.

Were you shocked by that? Or did you...

-I was pissed off.

-Yeah.

I wasn't that much attached to Vogue.

And I found it a little hard to do fashion photographs.

It was a time when it was hard to be an American.

We're driving in the richest city in the world,

and all you've got is potholes.

Klein has continued making films and taking pictures

in a maverick, fiercely independent career which spans more than half a century.

Today he's one of the most collected photographers in the world,

and still takes a close interest in new versions of his work,

meeting up with his New York dealer to approve new prints

of some of his most popular images.

I thought the most interesting thing about this was all the mist...

The steam atmosphere in the room.

That must be quite hard to photograph.

We used cinema smoke...

..floating around.

It made it interesting for me to print, I know that.

I asked them to pose a bit like fashion models.

They were afraid that I'd be making fun of them.

But when they saw the photograph,

they thought they looked beautiful.

I think they look beautiful myself.

And sexy.

As well as producing new prints,

Klein's determination to constantly revisit his work,

has led him to paint the photographic contact sheets

of some of his most iconic images.

Using his paintbrush to remind us of the way the perfect picture

was once selected in a pre-digital age.

There's a William Klein aesthetic.

It's a multi-disciplinary approach.

It's exactly what you want to see.

You do actually want to see an image-maker

exploring different ways of making images.

And at the Tate Modern exhibition, in one of the most dramatic rooms,

these painted contacts are being displayed on a spectacular scale.

So there's your famous picture of the boy with the gun.

And you decide to take the two frames. Because that's the famous...

Yes. Two frames because everybody knows this photograph, here.

In showing two photographs,

you can see these kids are posing for me.

Laughing, actually.

Among the painted contacts, is one of Klein's most famous images.

That was quite controversial

when you took that picture the first time, wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

Her smoking a cigarette like that.

Smoking a cigarette like that.

For fashion, you had to have a cigarette holder and gloves.

And this was published in all the Vogues except American Vogue.

They didn't publish it in American Vogue because...?

She is smoking like a sailor.

Not elegant.

-And was she supposedly modelling that hat?

-Yeah...

That was the idea.

I was doing hat shots.

What happened to her?

She died. She had a cancer.

What was her...

Her name? Evelyn Tripp.

You know, in those days, people didn't know the names of models.

Models were not stars...with names.

Today they're like movie stars.

William continues to take pictures of the next generation of fashion stars.

His imaginative eye

is still highly prized as a way of getting noticed

in today's imagine-saturated world.

In recent years, he has been a regular contributor

to the American fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar.

He has a way of showing fashion...

It's almost because he doesn't care,

that it produces something that is so extraordinary.

At the opening night of the Tate Modern show,

William plays the role of genial host,

enjoying a bit of high-speed mingling.

But, as ever, he's always camera-in-hand,

documenting the moment.

Now well into this 80s,

William Klein is one of the last survivors of a generation

who shaped the art of 20th century photography.

And he shows no sign of giving up.

He's got such a strength about him.

You can't imagine getting on his wrong side.

But at the same time you know he's a real softie.

-You look handsome now.

-You did a miracle.

You look handsome.

He's just...one of a kind.

You got a good haircut.

There are no rules in creativity.

Klein recognised that from the word go.

Take my picture.

I think all photographers have got this streak of energy in them

that other people don't seem to have.

I'm up here. What are you photographing?

OK, thank you.

-On three. Ahh! Thank you.

-You're welcome.

William. Look at you.

You...you...you're looking good, right?

No, I don't look good.

After a creative life spanning over 60 years,

his passion for making images, remains as strong as ever.

As does his determination to do things his way.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd