William Klein

I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder.

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

I was a very clumsy Jewish kid.

Don't have rules, taboos, or limits.

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.

The English are very exotic to me.

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I used to think that most of these fashion creators weren't that great, and if the photograph was good, it was mostly thanks to the photographer.

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.

I find it satisfying that what I've done in photography has had so much influence in how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things.

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

I think that Damien Hirst putting a shark in a bath of formaldehyde is nothing.

What's very funny is when you see amateurs filming something, they do some things no professionals would dare to do. They instinctively do things that are very avant-garde and useful.

In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America.

I was making a film on Muhammad Ali in 1964, and I went to Miami to film everything around the fight for the world championship with Sonny Liston. I had the good luck of flying down to Miami, and there was one empty seat, and the guy sitting next to this empty seat was Malcolm X.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm an outsider, I guess.

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

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

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.

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

When you use film, you use accidents, but there aren't any accidents with digital photography. I don't mind that it's easy. But I do mind that there is a sort of consensus with the camera and the subject and the light, and you look at something, and you photograph it, and you get what you see.

The digital camera takes photographs in practically no light: it will dig out the least bit of light available. I was amazed to see the results of photographs that I wouldn't take ordinarily. That's the advantage of digital photography.

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.

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.

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

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.

Fashion was more of a sideline for me. I did it for the money.

Why did I take fashion photographs? I thought it was fun. And there was a lot of money.

I think it's obscene. I don't know how you support the monarchy. How can you do that?

Fashion had no interest for me. I would take photographs in the studio. I would go back home, and my wife would say, 'What is the fashion like for this season?' And I would say, 'I have no idea.'

If I look back, I think most of the things I did - the films, the books, the collaborations with these magazines - were mostly by accident.

French photography was basically poetic, and mine was vulgar and brash and violent, except that there's never any violence in the photographs: it's only in the photographic style.

I like the streets. I grew up in the streets.

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.

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

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

I always dreamt of becoming an artist in Paris. Thanks to the Army, it happened.

I was 24 years old at the time. I had no real notion of what photography was about. I had no training. By accident, I put a negative in an enlarger, and you can do many things with that negative.

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.

I like film. I'm old fashioned.

In fashion, you have assistants, flashes; you can make sets. There are people running around doing things for you. But I can take it or leave it.

For my first book, 'New York,' I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera.

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.

I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor.

I thought it would be good not to hide the fact that you're taking a photograph, and have people react and come in close and also make a commentary on what's being photographed: 'This is a photo, this is my point of view.'