“Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo ?”asks the title of William Klein’s most famous film. If you turn the question around on Klein and ask who he is, the answer is likely to be a long one. For not only is he among the most renowned fashion photographers of the century, but he’s also (as well as art directing his own books), the director of a score of documentaries and feature films, and over 250 television ads.Klein is featured here this winter with a major retrospective at the Pompidou Center. It provides a detailed look at more than 50 years of work, juxtaposing some of his earliest and most recent photographs, as well as various book dummies, extracts from films, paintings, drawings and posters – selected largely from the artist’s personal archives.
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