Cultural Product - The Many Lives of William Klein (2012)

I wanted to include a documentary as one of my cultural products as I really find them fascinating and extremely informative. The visual perspective of the documentarian makes the information sink in more as they are getting personal interactions with the artist at hand. I chose a William Klein documentary as I appreciate his work and find it interesting that an artist from New York made it in Paris and his viewpoint on the life after the war.

Heres the link to the video that I watched:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnN9LMvjM7Y

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I watched the 58 minute long documentary and it opened my eyes to the type of artist that Klein is. His images radiate so much energy and life that you feel like you're in the image, he lives in the moment and you can truly feel that through his images. He was born in 1928 to a Jewish Immigrant family rocked by the impact of the great Stock Market Crash. When he was 13-14, he visited the Museum of Art for the first time as he stated that he could ' escape from reality ' art seemed to make him like he was moving up in the world, even before her made it big.

The documentary depicts the life of William Klein and his life experiences that he has documented for the duration of 50 years. He is known as the pioneer of 20th Century photography - such as his urban street photography, film and fashion. What was interesting to find out about Klein was that he studied under the legendary French sculptor and painter, Fernand Leger. Leger was one of the great pioneers of modern art and his work explored different aspects of Cubism and Futurism. Some of this influence rubbed off on Klein during his early years as an artist as his work that he produces was full of bold lines, and rich colours. His trademark of red and black.

One part of the documentary which interested me was when the narrator read out that Klein bought his camera from the photographer Cartier - Bresson. This is complete irony as their style of imagery couldn't be more opposite. Bressons work is him kind of hiding away from his subjects, acting as a ghost in the streets. Whereas Klein is in the action, up in peoples faces capturing the life of the times that he was in.

The overall experience of this documentary has truly inspired me, as I believe it may have to a lot of other aspiring photographers. The documentary depicts the artist in a way that focuses on the contrasting sides of his personality. One side of him is the straight talking street kid that is in with all the action, and the other side to him which is the sensitive artist which is noticed more when he is going into great detail about his work and the experiences within the images. Due to these traits that Klein has, its clear to see why his images have such a high spirit to them and its key to understanding the richness of his work.