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" 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. "

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" 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. "

William Klein

Brooklyn

Country

Friends

" 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. "

" Photography led me to experiment in graphic work and, actually, painting. "

William Klein

Work

Led

" I'm an outsider, I guess. "

William Klein

Outsider

Guess

" The kinetic quality of New York, the kids, dirt, madness - I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I cropped, blurred, played with the negatives. "

" 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. "

" I thought it would be good not to hide the fact that you're taking a photograph, and have people react and come in close and also make a commentary on what's being photographed: 'This is a photo, this is my point of view.' "

" 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

" 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. "

" If I didn't have to earn a living somehow, I would never have taken a fashion photograph in my life. "

" 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 think that Damien Hirst putting a shark in a bath of formaldehyde is nothing. "

" My complaint is that Americans drive me crazy, and the politics drive me crazy. "

William Klein

Complaint

Crazy

" 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. "

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

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

" The English are very exotic to me. "

William Klein

Very

Exotic

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

" I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things. "

William Klein

Step

Down

" 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 film. I'm old fashioned. "

William Klein

Old

Film

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

" I didn't really know who Cassius Clay was. I just wanted to show America through a heavyweight championship fight. Ever since my childhood, I'd been fascinated by the way the whole country becomes polarised around this event. "

" My sister was brilliant: she was in the 25 top math students in the country. When she finished college, I said, 'Spend a couple of months here in Europe. You'll get another take on life.' She never came - married some schmuck who made clothes for fat women on Seventh Avenue. "

" The best critics of America are Americans. "

" 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 father was convinced that America was the greatest place in the world. I'm afraid I didn't have the family I would have dreamed of. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think it's obscene. I don't know how you support the monarchy. How can you do that? "