On the death of W. Klein
William Klein had been very old for quite some time. He passed away a year ago, at ninety-six, a true prodigy of a man and an artist. If you ever get the chance to watch the documentary "The Many Lives of William Klein" (2012), you'll see an eighty-six-year-old Klein, full of vitality, smoking and photographing everything and everyone as if the world would never end. Between jokes, he continued traveling from continent to continent, always on the lookout for the perfect shot, still creating situations that seemed spontaneous to take photos that appeared equally spontaneous, but upon analysis, always reveal a meticulous balance and composition, and a supernatural mastery of imperfection as a constructive element of images.
When I heard of his death, I spent days drawing versions of some of his photos, just as I used to do when studying fine arts forty years ago. He has always been my reference photographer, and from his images, I have learned and drawn so much.
