Photography in the Urban Milieu, 1930s-50s

The reading that briefly summarized the New York School photographers was very informative. 

In William Klein's New York, we see photographs made in the city that were quite unusual during this time. There was a small interest in photography as art. The small amount that was considerable was of a much more formal aesthetic, such as the work of Henry Cartier-Bressan, Walker Evans, and Alfred Steiglitz. Klein and his high-contrast, grainy, gritty, utterly informal photographs depict multiple lifestyles and visual aspects of New York City. The book is split into 7 chapters and with the images there is no accompanying text. To the opposite end, there is an abundance of text within the images.

During the time that Klein made these photographs, he began working for Vogue magazine. I find the relationship between Klein having a new day job at Vogue and his use of advertising text in his work to be incredibly fascinating. Although he was making work separate from the type of photographs one would find in Vogue, he was heavily influenced (whether knowing or unknowing) by the visual stimuli of the marketing and what that did to the image of the city. Klein even stated that he would be inspired by things "all over the place, three million a day, blowing in the gutter, over-flowing ashcans, the New York Daily News." He also said, "Fashion magazines were our art magazines." With any magazine, as with any city, there is an extreme abundance of advertisements.

 

In these photographs, we are seeing the intensive visual stimuli that the city produces. The images suggest that the advertising and text is unavoidable in creating photographs in the city. There is no escape. By portraying all of this advertising in the Klein's art, we see these signs and texts as what Gleber refers to as the "art of the street".

In relation to the past reading by Anke Gleber, Klein can be considered as a "flaneur". He is drawn to the visual stimuli produced through this massive amount of advertising, yet approaches it with a "blase" attitude. Klein states, "I was never after news, of course, just the dumbest, most ordinary stuff." If Klein is looking for the "most ordinary stuff", and there is an obvious amount of advertisements within the work, then William Klein, in relation to Gleber's interpretation of Georg Simmel's thoughts, is experiencing a reactionary defense to the over-abundance of visual stimuli presented by the city.

Although there is a great deal of advertisements photographed in the images of New York, most of them do not hold the advertisement as the primary subject within the frame. This method is further suggesting that Klein had a more casual response to the over abundance advertising visual stimuli within his art inspiration from magazines, his job at Vogue, and the city itself.