When Perfect Photos Aren't Perfect
William Klein's street photography
What makes a perfect photo? When taking ones own photographs it can be easy to hone in on, ruminate over, and be critical of technicalities like high resolution and perfect framing, but the truth is perfect art isn’t always perfect; this is something that is portrayed in William Klein’s street photography. In exchange for physical perfection, we get slithers of real life and iconic visual style. His work displays the freeze frames that get lost in the motion of it all.
The other week, I picked up a book titled ‘William Klein: ABC’ from the library. I’d heard of Klein before and, after a brief flick through, decided to check it out.
The cover displays The William Klein photo, which I’ve added above, and it’s the one image that comes to mind when I think of his work. I didn’t know a lot about Klein, however I was familiar with this image, as it is not only The William Klein photo, it’s arguably The street photography photo.
The grit and grain in the image mirrors the grit of the scene that is pushed forward when paired with the scrunching scowl of the boy. It’s distinctive and bordering brash with not just the physical elements, but with the subject matter too - a young boy with a gun. The image balances the serious and the playful. In the context of street photography we assume the gun is a toy, so despite the boys serious demeanour, we take it with a pinch of salt and are amused by the youthful playfulness.
A sense of theatre also hangs about this photo via the amount of focal layers; the focus being on the boy and the gun being an out of focus haze. ‘Gun I’ gives the spectator a distinctive physical space within the photo, as though we are taking the photo ourselves and seeing this in front of us, which is something Klein was so good at, getting not just himself into the crowd, but the audience too. Despite the lack of colour, it is visually striking, playful, and intense, which follows throughout Klein’s street photography, and it’s these, especially at the time, non typical elements that give his work its impact.
Klein came after an era of street photography where Henri Cartier-Bresson was king.
Cartier-Bresson’s photography utilised longer lenses, the camera spectates from a distance, and he produced sharp, clean images. Klein intentionally went against this. By using wider lenses, Klein had to be within the people to photograph them, making the camera have a strong physical and personified presence within the space. He trusted the shutter to capture whatever it could, producing a different effect and style to the photographers who worked prior to him.
There’s also, in my opinion, a heaping dollop of cinematic-ness in Klein’s work. The people look real, but also seem surreal and like characters. It goes to question whether time and nostalgia effect our perception of his work. Do we see these photos differently now, since they have a distinct time period about them? We feel connected to the people as they feel very real, but at the same time streets no longer look the same as they did 50 years ago, which perhaps contributes to making these people feel more like characters in a way.
Another interesting aspect I noticed about some of Klein’s images, that adds to this cinematic dramatic effect, is that with the layering of people, there are similarities to narrative paintings.
This is something that I think is shown his photo ‘Armistice Day’, where we can also see the full advantage of the wide lenses that Klein used. People are staggered throughout the image and, fitting perfectly all in the frame, they’re posed like sky scrappers in a built up skyline. Additionally, we even have one man breaking the fourth wall and looking directly at the camera, which was something artists would also do in narrative paintings. Unlike ‘Gun I’, the focus is fairly consistently sharp throughout the layers of the image and we can see all the focal layers clearly enough, even though the couple in front are in full focus, the depth of field is deep enough where we can see details in the far background. As spectators, we are led to the background by using the people. Our focal point is the couple at the front since they are the most in focus and we zigzag to each character, getting deeper and deeper into the image.
While flicking through the book, I came across this other photo, which I was instantly drawn to, with its high contrast and long exposure.
Who are these people and does it matter that we can’t tell? In my opinion this photo perfectly imitates the many faces at a party or club that we never actually see or remember. A moment of squeezing past others’ chairs to make our way to the bathroom or bar. Film photography is an unforgiving medium, unlike digital photography you can’t review photos straight after shooting and it tends to be more difficult to produce an image in environments that aren’t well lit. Klein uses what he can to get the photo, in this case a longer exposure, even if its blurred like this, it comes out beautifully.
“If you look at life, you see blur. Shake your hand. Blur is a part of life.”
The perfect photo isn’t always perfect. Klein’s photographs are as real as the people in them. Through shaking off the concern of capturing reality, we get to something more real and something with style. By knowing the rules of art, we can break them and get a more desired effect to represent not just reality in general, but our own individual reality. Art isn’t just technicality and skill, its a whole language and method of cross cultural and timeline conversation. When we stray from perfection, we get style, and through style we get perfection. Sometimes art is more real by being less real.
In my opinion, style is more important than ever with the advancement of technology. We can take photos sharper than what our eyes can see, edit sunsets, and tweak expressions, but through ‘mistakes’ we get experimentation and play. You don’t always get real-ness with reality and a faint blur or slight shift of focus can give more life to a piece of art. We have, what it feels like, all the tech to replicate reality perfectly, but art doesn’t just show what we see with our eyes, but what we see with our souls, whether we’re conscious of it or not.