WILLIAM KLEIN PRESS CONFERENCE

 

 

 

Today, Monday, November 19^th, in his press conference at Warehouse C of the port, director, photographer, graphic designer and painter William Klein mentioned that he despises certainty and predefinitions in art and searches for the unexpected. This year’s festival honors William Klein with a tribute and a retrospective photography exhibition in collaboration with the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition which is curated by Marion Inglessi, contains photographs from Moscow, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Rome and of course Greece. Please note that on Tuesday at 12:30 the audience will have the chance to walk through the exhibition with William Klein who will be presenting his work.

 

The President of the Festival, Georges Corraface spoke warmly about Klein: “He is unpredictable, where nobody expects him to be. I still wonder if he’s really here. During the opening of the exhibition, he pulled a simple machine out of his bag which made me think that a good photograph is not a matter of technology, but of being able to shift your perception beyond the cliches”.

 

“With his work, William Klein changed the way that we see the world. In his filming, Klein aims at a realism which is much deeper than simply a portrayal of reality. An artist with a deep social conscience, he managed to overthrow every safe convention. With every click of his camera, Klein adds a new word to the language of images”, said the Festival’s Director, Despina Mouzaki.

 

The Director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Xanthippe Hoipel characterized Klein as a multi-talented citizen of the world, “as his work contains every metropolis”, and added: “He left the studio and brought his models into natural environments, in order to make them more intimate, like the impressionist painters who chased the light and sun around. A political artist, he dealt with real problems in the world, like Vietnam, revolutions, May 1968, racism and others”.

 

A pioneer, opportune and political, William Klein reacts to everything that the media present as if it were junk. He visits America where he comes from, but he prefers to live in Europe because: “I’d have a heart attack every half hour with everything on television and what politicians say”.

 

All of his films “start from a subject which needs analysis. Mr. Freedom was shot in 1967 when the America was at war in Vietnam, however the language of power, of the president, spoke about events and not the war. Like today when Bush refers to the war in Iraq as a “plan for democracy”.

 

He doesn’t take photographs often, “because it would become too automatic and lose its luster. It’s much more thrilling and productive when somebody changes what they work with”. This way he re-discovers “what it means to take pictures”.

 

Regarding the photographs form Greece, which are on display for the public for the first time, William Klein said: “I visited the Greek islands with my wife. I’m not sure how much they reflect Greek life, but I think these photographs are very important. Greece is a part of us and of the world. Everything comes from Greece, democracy, even our own understanding of life itself”.