The career of William Klein (b. 1928) spans more than sixty years. His work had an immense influence on photography during the second half of the twentieth century. Sizeable exhibitions of his work are seldom seen in the Netherlands – the last one was held in the Stedelijk Museum in 1967. Foam is therefore particularly proud to present this retrospective exhibition filling the entire museum on the Keizersgracht for three months, doing justice to the life and work of one of the greatest masters of photography. His work had an immense influence on photography during the second half of the twentieth century. 

Throughout his long and extremely productive career, William Klein has always remained his own man: independent, unconventional, enigmatic and contrary, but invariably exceptionally talented.

The exhibition gives ample coverage to Klein’s ground-breaking work in New York in the 1950s while also displaying work made in Rome, Moscow and Tokyo. His work for Vogue shows Klein was a great innovator in the field of fashion photography. In addition to his early experiments with abstract photography, his large-scale, painted-on contact prints that he’s been creating in more recent years will also be on view in Foam. A selection of Klein’s feature films and documentaries is shown in a library space. This exceptional William Klein retrospective exhibition has been curated by Foam and can be seen exclusively in Amsterdam.