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" I was fascinated by the Black Panthers because I'd been in contact with the Nation of Islam, thanks to Muhammad Ali, and their way of talking was that the whites were the devil, and they'd get rid of them once they took over. "

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" In fashion, you have assistants, flashes; you can make sets. There are people running around doing things for you. But I can take it or leave it. "

William Klein

Doing

Fashion

You

" I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple. "

" The English are very exotic to me. "

William Klein

Very

Exotic

" When you use film, you use accidents, but there aren't any accidents with digital photography. I don't mind that it's easy. But I do mind that there is a sort of consensus with the camera and the subject and the light, and you look at something, and you photograph it, and you get what you see. "

" The best critics of America are Americans. "

" I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger. "

" If I look back, I think most of the things I did - the films, the books, the collaborations with these magazines - were mostly by accident. "

" My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village. "

" My father was like Willy Loman, you know: he never really made it - and he was from a family where there were people who had made it. "

" I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero. "

" In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America. "

" I find it satisfying that what I've done in photography has had so much influence in how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things. "

" Fashion was more of a sideline for me. I did it for the money. "

William Klein

Fashion

" Memories. That's the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans. "

" I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor. "

" Fashion had no interest for me. I would take photographs in the studio. I would go back home, and my wife would say, 'What is the fashion like for this season?' And I would say, 'I have no idea.' "

" People didn't object to me taking their photo. It was something everybody thought was their due: to be King for a Day, win the lottery and be photographed. "

" I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn't matter to me. "

William Klein

Matter

Know

" I like festivals of all kinds: in 1969, I made a film about the first Pan-African festival in Algiers, which celebrated the countries that had been liberated 10 years earlier. There was a tremendous feeling of kinship. "

" I'm an outsider, I guess. "

William Klein

Outsider

Guess

" In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I used to think that most of these fashion creators weren't that great, and if the photograph was good, it was mostly thanks to the photographer. "

" You do things for yourself, and you do things for other people, and you hope that these things coincide. "

" When I made 'Polly Maggoo,' it was more or less the end of this collaboration with 'Vogue' because I made a caricature of the editor-in-chief and the fashion people, so they didn't really adore me. "

William Klein

Fashion

People

" Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds. "

" I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country. "

" I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up. "

" My way of living and working is that I'll do my thing. I went from one thing to another. That annoyed people. They didn't know how to categorize me. "

William Klein

Way

People

" Being an expatriate doesn't go down well in America. "

" I wasn't part of any movement. I was working alone, following my instinct. "

" I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton. "