William Klein: Painted Contacts

Summary

Working at the nexus of painting and photography, William Klein conceived this original series when he was in the process of reviewing other photographers' contact sheets for a film he was making. Referencing the age of film photography, when photographers selected images by circling individual negatives on a contact sheet with brightly coloured grease pencils, Klein's works invent a new kind of art object that organically marries painting and photography. The resulting pieces are enormous mural-sized works in which bold, kinetic colour frames and reframes enlarged black-and-white images from throughout his career. Klein's iconic fashion and street photography, always gritty and bold, is given a new immediacy and relevance in this second life. In his foreword to this edition, Klein describes these works as all brush strokes and jubilation. The jubilation of painting recall[s] the celebration of taking the photo.