Roman Bonnefoy
William Klein
PhotographerKnown for:
Life Is Good and Good for You in New York (1956); wide-angle street photography
Education:
City College of New York; Sorbonne, Paris; studied painting with Fernand Léger
William Klein left New York for Paris after World War II service, studied painting with Fernand Léger, and returned to New York in 1954 to make a book of photographs - Life Is Good and Good for You in New York (1956) - that used wide-angle distortion, motion blur, and the confrontational close-up to produce images that violated almost every convention of fine-art photography. He subsequently made similarly transgressive books on Rome, Moscow, and Tokyo before moving into fashion photography at Vogue and feature filmmaking.
William Klein's Gear List(1)
Leica
Connection Source
ShooterfilesWebsite
Connection note
Lent a Leica IIIf by Henri Cartier-Bresson for his groundbreaking New York work (1954-55)
Product description
The Leica IIIf, produced from 1950 to 1957, was a screw-mount 35mm rangefinder with flash synchronization. Its compact size and quiet shutter made it practical for street and documentary photography in the postwar period.
Know something William Klein uses that's not listed?
Log in to submitLast updated March 20, 2026