William Klein Quotes

There is a secret, I think. When you are front of a camera there is something that happens. Some relationship, some movement, some strange kind of suspension. That's where you find the layer in yourself that is duplicated in everyone. And when you get it right, if you can imagine all the hearts beating in one beat, it's like that. It's beautiful.

People think photography is about photographing. To me, it’s about relationships.

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

I learned quickly enough when to click the shutter, but what I was becoming aware of more slowly was a story-writer's truth: The thing to wait on, to reach for, is the moment in which people reveal themselves... I learned from my own pictures, one by one, and had to; for I think we are the breakers of our own hearts.

I photograph different people all the time. I like to shoot all kinds of people.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

I remember the first time I went out on the street to shoot pictures. I was in downtown Philadelphia, and I just took a walk and started making contact with people and photographing them, and I thought, 'I love this. This is what I want to do forever.' There was never another question.

I knew from the first moment I picked up a camera, on my first school assignment, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to find a way to travel the world and tell the stories of the people I met through photographs.

I'm interested in the person I photograph. The world is so beautiful as it is; there's so much going on, which is sort of interesting. It's just so crazy, so why do I have to put some retouching on it? It's just pointless to me.

I'm really taken by the fact that my photographs live on somebody's wall.

The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.

The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a poet.

Photographers feel guilty that all they do for a living is press a button.

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

I’m trying to please myself; certainly that’s a big criterion... though in a sense, I don’t take images just for myself. I take images that I think other people will want to see. I don’t take pictures to put in a box and hide them. I want as many people to see them as possible.

Photography is a way of introducing people to other people.

I sometimes think I'm a mechanic. I just take pictures.

There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.

I'm a very, very basic photographer. The main strength of my pictures, I guess, is the mood and feel I get out of the people that I meet. But technically I don't think I'm very advanced. That never interested me.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

Photographs will always be impressive because they show us nature, and all artists will find in them a world of sensations. The photographer must therefore intervene as little as possible, so as not to cause photography to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses, notwithstanding its defects.

The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.

I want my pictures to cut through political abstractions... and make a connection on a human level.

Photography should be redefined. It's largely technical... Photography is just unbelievably limiting. I always think of David Bailey and all the fashion photographers - they overlap, you can't always tell who did it. I don't really even like photography all that much. I just think it's so overdone.

I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.