In Antonia + Taxi, New York (Vogue), 1962, William Klein recast fashion photography as an act of cinéma-vérité. Dutch model Antonia Boekestijn steps out of a Yellow Cab into the blur of Manhattan traffic, her body angled forward to cut through the whir of urban action surrounding her.
“She appears filled with confidence,” says Peter Fetterman, whose eponymous Santa Monica gallery is currently showcasing the photo in “William Klein: In Your Face!” (through May 16). “The image is distinctive of Klein’s run-and-gun style and his use of a telephoto lens to compress the energy and movement of the composition into the frame.”
Klein’s fashion work for Vogue upended the genre in the 1950s and ’60s by refusing to insulate haute couture from the real world. Instead of staging models in phony-looking studios, he dropped them among the crowds, cars and cacophony of major cities.
“It’s not necessary to make order out of chaos,” Klein once said. “Chaos itself is interesting.”
That idea carried across his groundbreaking street photography, films, graphic design, photograms and picture books, as well as his “no-rules attitude,” as Fetterman puts it, toward shooting fashion.
Born in New York City in 1926, Klein served briefly in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II and was stationed in Germany during the postwar occupation. Rather than return immediately to the United States, he moved to Paris in 1948, studying at the Sorbonne and training as a painter, including a stint as Fernand Léger’s assistant.
He received no formal instruction in camerawork but felt a deep affinity for the speed and honesty of photography. Moving between New York and Paris, Klein developed a visual language that favored confrontation and wit, nimbleness and realism.
Boekestijn was Klein’s frequent collaborator and muse at Vogue, and their rapport shines through in the ease and immediacy of Antonia + Taxi. “Antonia was one of Klein’s favorite models,” Fetterman says. “They knew there would never be a dull moment!”
The elegance of her outfit in the taxi shot, a head-to-toe ensemble in black that may have been produced by Tiffeau & Busch, is not diminished by the gritty surroundings: It’s sharpened by the contrast.
“It challenges the conventions of fashion photography by bringing high fashion into the streets,” Fetterman explains. “That juxtaposition, combined with the energy of the city, gives new life to both the image and the clothes.”
